MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

In October 1972 a plane carrying a rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, who were on their way to play a game in Santiago, Chile, crashed high in the Andes mountains. 15 of the 45 passengers and crew died on impact but the others – some of whom were badly injured – quickly had to figure out how to survive. During the following 72 days, the survivors suffered extreme hardships, including exposure, starvation, and an avalanche, which led to the deaths of thirteen more passengers; famously, but reluctantly, they were forced to resort to cannibalism to stave off death due to lack of food. Eventually two of the rugby players – Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa – decided to strike out for help. They climbed a 15,000 foot mountain without gear, and then hiked almost 50 miles. It took them almost 10 days, but they finally stumbled into a remote village, where they could obtain help and call for the Chilean Army to rescue the other survivors. This incredible story was turned into a book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, and then into an acclaimed film, Alive, in 1993. This new film – La Sociedad de la Nieve, or Society of the Snow – is the first Spanish-language film version of the story, and is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona.

The score for Society of the Snow is by Michael Giacchino, who previously worked with director Bayona on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 2018. This is Giacchino’s first score for a non-English language film, and he considers it to be “the most emotional film he has worked on to date”. It would have been very easy for Giacchino to follow the template set out for him by James Newton Howard and the score for Alive; as I wrote in my review of it, Howard’s music expertly treads a fine line between the different aspects of the story – the carnage of the plane crash, the horror of their decision to resort to cannibalism, the hope and faith they have that they will survive, and the heroic efforts they make to ultimately ensure that happens – without ever sensationalizing any of them. However, Giacchino actually went in a slightly different direction, and wrote a score which is less about heroism and is more about the harshness of nature itself, and the dread, isolation, and helplessness of the survivors, combined with a respectful sense of remembrance for the dead.

Interestingly, Giacchino also chose to acknowledge the traditional music of the Andes in his score too, augmenting his specialized symphony orchestra (comprising mostly strings, piano, and harp – virtually no brass or woodwinds) with guitar textures, local percussion items, and a vocal choir that sings mostly in Mapuche, an indigenous language from that part of the Andes. Giacchino says that these voices were intended to represent ” the voice of the people who didn’t come back,” which again feeds more into the score’s overall tone of loss and mourning.

It’s interesting to note how, in terms of approach, Giacchino seemingly returned to his roots with this score, because the score Society of the Snow resembles the most is the one he wrote for the TV show Lost – another story about survivors of a plane crash trying to find a way home, albeit in vastly different circumstances. There are two main themes that weave through the score, neither of which seem to be associated with one particular person, but instead seem to be loosely built around the concepts of ‘despair’ and ‘hope,’ although in actual fact they are somewhat interchangeable and malleable, depending on what combination of emotions Giacchino is trying to convey. The latter of these two is the one which has the most Lost in it; watching the film, I was specifically reminded of the music at the end of season two where the character Michael tries to leave the island on a makeshift raft, and the music rises to accompany him and his valiant efforts.

What Giacchino does in Society of the Snow is take these two themes and slowly, carefully, painstakingly develop them over the course of the film, with just the subtlest changes in orchestration and tempo as each scene dictates, until it all comes together in the exceptionally moving finale. Interestingly, a lot of the first half of the film is mostly un-scored, with Giacchino and Bayona instead allowing the natural ambiance of the mountains to convey the isolation and loneliness of the crash survivors.

The gentle piano writing in “Leaving Home” contains the first performance of one of the themes, but afterward the music is dominated by moments of dissonance and anguish. The terrifying “Crash” sounds like a musical representation of a squealing jet turbine, while cues like “Barren,” “Alien World,” and “First Scout” use string harmonics and guitar strums to paint a vivid portrait of the beautiful yet hostile Andean landscape, and the haunting starkness of their situation. Things change in “Susy Passes,” in which Giacchino revisits the theme with an emotional depth that is enhanced enormously by having the underlying chords of the theme sung by a choir, although this brief moment of respite is shattered immediately first by the devastatingly dissonant “News Radio,” which underscores the scene where the survivors react to the desperate news that the search to find them has been called off, and then by the guttural and disorienting “The Second Expedition”.

The main themes do not really come back in any prominent form until “Today Is My Birthday,” and there is a powerful statement for staccato strings and lyrical pianos in “I See the Sky,” which underscores the scene where the survivors dig their way out of the aircraft fuselage following an avalanche. Giacchino uses this brief moment of celebration and relief as the jumping off point for the remainder of the score, as the survivors subsequently enact a plan for small group to hike out across the seemingly endless mountainous wilderness in the hope of finding civilization and rescue.

“Take Home the Love” sees Giacchino using a tender acoustic guitar to the main theme, allowing the words of inspiration and encouragement from one of the dying friends to take on a more poignant attitude. “Nando Returns” brings in hand claps and other ethnic percussion items, giving the cue a sense of resolve and determination. There’s a gorgeous Caroline Dale cello solo in “Sleeping Bag,” and then there is a wistfulness and sense of deep emotional pathos in “Numa Accepts His Place,” which blends the soft pianos with a hummed chorus and gently plucked guitars to give it a near-religious sense of reverence, appropriate for the death scene of the most god-fearing of the crash survivors.

“Andes Ascent” and “Onward” are the two cues that underscore the scenes of Nando and Roberto making their last, desperate attempt to hike over the mountains to find rescue. There is an almost Morricone-like sense of determination and resolve in the way that Giacchino blends the percussion and choir into his orchestra; at times it reminds me of the score for The Mission, in the way that the music is almost primal in how depicts it the forces of nature, the vast scale of their task, and the way the two men are literally dwarfed by the mountains around them.

“Over the River” is an almost breathless version of the ‘hope’ theme as Nando and Roberto run into a Chilean cowboy on horseback and realize that their ordeal is over. “Found” is the score’s wonderful finale; it is here that Giacchino finally allows all the orchestral forces at his disposal to rise to their fullest. The sense of delirious joy and relief that the survivors must have felt when the rescue helicopters arrived is palpable, and Giacchino scores the scene with the most Lost-like variation on his main theme, guitars and chorus joining the orchestra and then rising to beautifully emotional heights. The string sustain that precedes the final, glorious statement of the theme is spine tingling, and the ‘ya-ya-ya’ ethnic vocal textures are a unique touch. The conclusive “Home” is equally beautiful, although perhaps a touch more introspective, as again Giacchino follows Bayona’s lead and makes his finale more a remembrance of those lost on the mountain than a celebration of those who survived it.

Society of the Snow is a subtle score, one of the most understated of Giacchino’s career, and I would suggest that it takes both a little patience and also an appreciation of the tone of the film before you can really understand what the music is intended to do. This isn’t a traditional survival-against-the-odds story of heroism; instead it’s a tragedy, an examination of faith and friendship in the most terrible circumstances imaginable, and eventually a recognition of the human spirit enduring the unendurable. To that end, I think that what Giacchino has done here is quite special, and it deserves all the awards-season accolades it has received.

Buy the Society of the Snow soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Leaving Home (1:23)
• Crash (1:04)
• Barren (1:33)
• Alien World (2:56)
• Flashback (1:03)
• First Scout (1:32)
• Susy Passes (8:18)
• News Radio (0:58)
• What Do I Become (1:14)
• The Second Expedition (4:43)
• Trapped (0:44)
• Today Is My Birthday (1:20)
• What’s the Limit (2:31)
• I See the Sky (2:01)
• A Plan to Cross the Mountains (3:10)
• Arturo’s Death (0:55)
• Setting Out (1:07)
• Heading Back (2:03)
• Take Home the Love (1:13)
• Nando Returns (5:02)
• Radio Failure (0:50)
• Sleeping Bag (0:53)
• Numa Accepts His Place (5:30)
• Andes Ascent (4:16)
• Onward (3:16)
• Over the River (1:09)
• Found (6:22)
• Home (4:06)

Running Time: 70 minutes 55 seconds

Netflix Music (2023)

Music composed by Michael Giacchino. Conducted by Cliff Masterson. Orchestrations by Jeff Kryka. Featured musical soloists Caroline Dale, Skaila Kanga and David Arch. Recorded and mixed by Peter Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley. Edited by John Finklea. Album produced by Michael Giacchino.