In the book The Snow Society, journalist Pablo Vierci describes in detail what it would be like to be at the end of the world. 18 years ago he climbed to the Valley of Tears glacier, on the border between Argentina and Chile, with the survivors of Flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force, which crashed there in October 1972. There were Roberto Canessa, Gustavo Zerbino, Adolfo Strauch and Ramón Sabella. “There you can't breathe, your mind is altered, your body doesn't work,” he says over Zoom. His story is part of the commitment he has to his schoolmates, who were left to their own devices in the Andes and waited 72 days for help. “They were able to create a society so different from ours. From here below we think: 'In an accident in the worst place in the world, packs and selfishness will emerge'; but the opposite happened,” he says.
Vierci was a student at the Stella Maris school, a private educational center in Montevideo that was also attended by the members of the rugby team that survived the terrible accident. One of them, Fernando Parrado, called him in 1973 to give him his version of what they had experienced in the mountains. Little by little, Vierci collected the testimonies of the other 15 survivors and in 2008 he published The Snow Society, the definitive account of the tragedy.
Vierci's book came into the hands of Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, when he was busy filming The Impossible (2011). In May of that year, the filmmaker sent a letter to the journalist telling him that The Snow Society inspired the film starring Naomi Watts about the tsunami that hit Thailand in 2004. “I met a person from another continent, much younger than me. , who thought exactly the same,” he says.
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A new edition of his book was presented half a century after the accident, in 2022. That same year, Bayona concluded filming the film inspired by Vierci's book and which is today part of the Netflix catalog and is nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film,
In September of last year they screened the film for the survivors, their families and the bereaved of the deceased. “It was the most moving experience in my life. It was a kind of shared symbolic hug, often postponed. “A healing experience.”
-In the book he mentions the “society of the plain”. What rules from The Snow Society should be transferred to our daily lives?
-One cannot extrapolate what happened. But what I do believe is that these 20-year-old kids showed us that things could be done differently. I think that is the reason why the movie and the book are having this gigantic success, it is becoming the topic of young people on social networks. They had nothing and what emerged there was a society guided by compassion and mercy. Maybe we have to correct the course of that plane so as not to crash into the mountain, those polarizations in which the world lives today make no sense.
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-Do you suggest that they survived because they had the same training?
-I think there is an advantage without being better or worse than the rest of America and the world. Uruguay is a very balanced country, where there are no great social or economic distances. (Albert) Einstein always highlighted that it was the most balanced country he knew, it reminded him of the small countries of Europe, where megalomania did not exist. If megalomania does not exist, you will never consider yourself more than the other, under any circumstances. I believe that what The Snow Society teaches us is that there is no such thing as megalomania. No one is more than another, to the extreme extent that everyone makes a pact of self-delivery: “If I don't live, I can serve as food for you to stay alive,” “if I don't make it, I hope you make it for me.” It is an extreme example of generosity and it is interesting that it is in the universal debate today.
-It is the best example of an egalitarian society.
-Absolutely. The thing is, you realize how absurd wars are or how absurd the differences over passports are. Imagine in The Snow Society that because someone had, I don't know, curly hair or because they were an Agronomy student, they were discriminated against. There everyone is fundamental, everyone gives their best and achieves the feat. When society comes together, impossible things are achieved and that is very inspiring.
-Juan Antonio Bayona took 10 years to have the financing to shoot the film, what were the conversations like?
-Believe me, I participated in many meetings and what they told us was something that seems incredible to me today. They told us that a film in Spanish and told from South America, Uruguay, with not too outstanding actors, was impossible. They were wrong because they underestimated the Spanish, they underestimated the South Americans.
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-Bayona dedicated the Goya to those who did not believe and the possible Oscar as well.
-(Laughs) That step is still missing. We have to convince that we have things of great value. We have to convince them to see the movie. The project was about to fail 100 times because there were requirements that we could not give up; It had to be a great work filmed in the mountains, in Spanish and with actors who are not outstanding so that there was that necessary balance.
-There is another interesting point, that of showing that masculinity without prejudice. What did you find most important about that approach?
-I share what you say. We have to get used to the fact that there is not only the classic virile hero. In this case, all the physical and mental strength of the expedition members is superhuman. But then there are other heroisms that are more linked to the maternal. One of them died this year—Coche Inciarte—and his role was to tenderly contain the psychological explosion that was latent, particularly in the youngest. Holding back in that situation, in which death is on your heels, isn't it heroic? But it is not epic heroism, but it is as heroic as the other, it has less visibility, but it is just as transcendent. Not only are they stripped of a nuance of power, it is as they say, “the naked self” from which the disguises, the entire theater of daily life, are removed.
-You are a friend of Nando and he said that he felt in the limbo of the living and the dead because his mother and sister died. What did it take for these stories to be different from Viven?
-We talk to them, infinite. For the film alone, 50 hours were shot in film format and the same number in audio only, with Bayona present. Not only were those interviews filmed, but when we were filming, every day he asked me for details: “Talk to the survivors or to the relatives of those who did not return and ask what this environment is like, what elements there are, how it is they are feeling.” All the detail to hav
e the hyperrealism that allows you to get to the essence and the essence is the truth.
-The film does not talk about how they adapted to “plain society.” Do you have more projects with Bayona?
-With the Bayona team, I hope they continue with more projects, we are talking. The film leaves an open ending and I totally agree with it, I am an associate producer for that reason. 'Jota' Bayona always said: “Let's not give the ending to the viewer, let's let each person complete the ending with their own lives.” Each one has its mountain range, as the survivors say.
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