Society of the Snow
NETFLIX
Guillermo Del Toro protege J A Bayona, after being behind the camera with the commercially successful albeit vastly underwhelming Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, returns to the foray of the critical darling akin to The Impossible and A Monster Calls with his latest release being an often thematically gripping and visceral experience: Society of the Snow.
An ensemble piece of breakthrough performers, Bayona crafts a visceral tale of the human spirit, showcasing the power of hope as well as its heartbreaking and paining effects of fear. It’s a tragic and ultimately harrowing experience to witness, echoing the experience of the survivors themselves in such an emotional and intense fashion. It’s an experience that, more often than not, becomes unpalatable and genuinely unnerving to watch, with such strength and intensity that Bayona conjures with his choice of camerawork and framing. Utilising intense close-ups to maximise the effects of claustrophobia and the world narrowing and closing in around them. Again, it’s unflinching in its tone of desperation. Roaring nights with heavy, last grasps breathing in intense close-ups hard cut to establishing wise shots of visual beauty and openness of a steady blue sky, calming morning with cold bodies lying stiff and silent. It is this nightmarish, fragmented, and dissonant atmosphere and approach that elevates the already terrifying world into something that gives both the audience and characters a feeling of faux freedom.
This is further enhanced by the breakthrough ensemble performers who are incredibly raw and organic in approach, with the lack of star power undeniably elevating the immersive experience tenfold. It maximises and heightens the inevitable and harrowing decisions the group faces and the torment of seeing these people never wake up due to trauma and hyperthermia brings an all too close-to-home authenticity to proceedings. Furthermore, the realisation of circumstance and the moral fallout of what these people will have to do is intensified – to reiterate – to a harrowing degree of trauma. It is externalised incredibly well with the aforementioned skill behind the camera but the pause, beats and emotive density from these performers is what undeniably harshens and brings true precedent at hand.
Thankfully, perhaps akin to his European sentiment and not Hollywood idealism, Bayona doesn’t fall into the camp of glamorising the tragedy or genre-fining it with an action-packed set-piece of its initial plane crash and resulting trauma of its aftermath. This is a story about survival and hope more than it is that very nature of torment and terror. In doing so, Bayona puts forward a film about the strength of mind and body. A collective tissue that is fragmented and must be put back together in even the most horrid and frightening of places. Society of the Snow is a feature that follows mankind to the brink of annihilation and watches them with pain and suffering come back into the light.
