I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains” offers an incontrovertible argument for the necessity of team spirit in the face of catastrophe. Without it, the 16 survivors out of 45 in a famous 1972 plane crash in the Andes that decimated a Uruguayan rugby team wouldn’t have made it through 72 days in a frigid wilderness with scant provisions.
To stay alive the passengers eventually resorted to cannibalism, consuming the flesh of friends and loved ones who had died in the crash. Even when forced into doing “things that I don’t think any animal is capable of doing eating its own species,” in the words of one survivor, discipline and teamwork prevailed. The carving and eating of human flesh became a rite that more than one compares to taking Holy Communion. Although many words are devoted to evoking the spiritual implications of eating human flesh, hardly any are given to describing the physical experience, which is just as well.
Because the story has already been told in “Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors,” the 1974 best seller by Piers Paul Read, and retold in its 1993 screen adaptation starring Ethan Hawke, why again? The short answer is that in “Stranded,” all 16 of the survivors, now middle-aged, tell the story in their own words. Since many of those words are eloquent, the assumption must be that their thoughts and impressions are the distillate of years of contemplation.
Their memories, akin to those of returning astronauts who studied Earth from outer space, are worth hearing. Mortal terror is outweighed by an overwhelming sense of wonder and personal discovery, as a ferocious will to live, not only for themselves but for one another, propels them to perform superhuman feats while exhausted and near starvation.
The director, a childhood friend of several of the survivors, has filled out their recollections with dreamlike re-enactments shown in bluish black-and-white sequences in which faces and bodies are blurred, as if observed through a blizzard.
As their hopes faded while they awaited rescue, one setback followed another. In the worst, eight people died and many nearly suffocated in an avalanche that buried the plane’s fuselage, where they had taken refuge, improvising sleeping bags out of seats and cushions.
Of the many voices heard in the film, the closest one to a group spokesman is Fernando Parrado, a k a Nando, who lost his sister and his mother in the crash. Carrying no equipment, he and a fellow survivor, Roberto Canessa, hiked 44 miles over peaks more than 13,000 feet high until they discovered signs of civilization. Three days before Christmas, they were spotted by a Chilean shepherd, who remembers, “They smelled of the grave; no animal would go near them.”
As the rescue is undertaken via helicopter, any lingering cynicism you might have harbored evaporates, and you may find yourself on the verge of tears. Long after the film ends, the words echo: “solidarity,” “sticking together,” “no laws, just habits and practices accepted by the group.” Noble ones, I might add.