[Full title: Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains]

The ultimate survival story

In this excellent documentary survivors of the famous 1972 rugby team plane that crashed in the Andes tell their story with reenactments. This time, unlike the case of Errol Morris' new film about the Abu Ghraib scandal, Standard Operating Procedure, reenactments cause no discomfort, even though aspects of the events shown are famously chilling. That's because in this context, as with Kevin Macdonald's Touching the Void (coincidentally also about survivors in the Andes), participants in the events are present on-screen to describing everything in detail so staged scenes don't feel like intrusion or speculation. There was a film dramatizing the events, Frank Marshall's 1993 Alive, with Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano, and others, but this will be the definitive film statement on this event, one of the great survival stories of recent times. The grainy recreations blend seamlessly with the actual film footage shot of the survivors at the moment when they were rescued.

It was October. They were just going from their home town in Uraguay for a friendly rugby match in Chile, flying over the dramatic, snowy heights of the Andes mountains. And then it happened: the plane is in the middle of a snow storm with heavy winds, the pilot loses control, and they go down. The crash was quiet, soft, mysterious, some survivors report. The 24 who were still living were mostly fine. What logic, they ask, in their survival; the others' death? Marcelo, leader of the team, set a ration of one square of chocolate and a small cup of liquor a day.

An aerial search for the crashed plane was almost impossible because it was a year of exceptional storms, the reason the plane went down.

At first we see the men who survived talking about the trip, the mood, the flight, and the crash. And there are quick, often hazy reenactment shots. Later, some of the survivors are seen actually there in the recent present, revisiting the site, remembering the dizziness, weakness, and nausea of hunger, eating face cream, drinking deodorant cups of wine and feeling drunk--and all that followed.

And then one describes realizing as the days pass and they grow weaker what they'd have to do--"Either we do it, or die." It was a gradual consensus among them that they'd have to "take that step." They had entered a new world where a dead body could be a meal, as one puts it. It's with great subtlety and tact that the film leads up to this difficult subject. In the end, the viewer is spared nothing. It was a choice to live--a responsibility to parents and family to use any means necessary. It wasn't brute instinct but a debated, considered decision. And yet it was not unanimous, and ultimately remained "another unsolved problem." Some saw it as a kind of holy communion. And this is how, in an effective statement to the public, one of them stilled the sensationalism of the press later on.

The radio told them after thirteen days the air search was called off--a terrible blow. They knew then they had to get out on their own. This is where some made a heroic effort to climb up out of the basin where the plane lay.

Suddenly one night the others think they're dead when the plane gets buried by avalanche, so their refuge became a trap from which they had to dig out. In this event their team leader Marcelo died along with another person and they were all buried for three days. And the avalanches continued.

There were several expeditions, the big one by three, after more deaths, at 61 days. One returns, because he is not fit enough. The two "expeditionaries" on the eighth or ninth day come to a path where there's no snow, water, livestock. They see two shepherds, and throw them a rock with a message about who they are. When they're taken back in a helicopter to rescue the others, it's unbelievable how far they walked. This return to the scene and the event 35 years later is perhaps the first time all the survivors could fully look these events in the face. It helps that these rugby players all came from the same school and still live close together. They're almost llike one big family. This is a very social experience all the way through--unlike many survivor stories, which tend to be lonely. But still, this is not the kind of thing many of us go through. There's a lot to ponder and digest here, and it's presented with the utmost skill and taste.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.