Alive
Alive (1993)
★★★ / ★★★★
This is one of those first American films I saw when I was about six or seven years old. Even though I had little understanding of the English language back then, I found myself mesmerized with what was happening on screen. Directed by Frank Marshall, “Alive” was about a group of survivors, led by Ethan Hawke as Nando Parrado and Josh Hamilton as Robert Canessa, whose plane had crashed in the Andes mountains back in 1972. Not only did they have to deal with the plane crash and the death of their mates and loved ones, they had to deal with starvation, plunging temperatures due to the weather, avalanche, and eventually finding a way out because the rescue teams had given up looking for survivors. Revisiting this picture after thirteen years after I’ve seen it for the first time, the images were that much more haunting and their journey that much more unbelievably brave. Their willingness to survive to the point where pretty much all of them decided that they would eat human flesh was so touching. It definitely made me think what lengths I would go to if I were put their situations. But I liked the fact that cannibalism was not the focus on this film because it was so much more than that. Instead of being a movie about people who got stuck in the mountains and cannibalism, it was a movie about how much the human body can withstand and how willpower can push us to our extreme limits and beyond. I found this to be a very moving tale and at times I couldn’t believe the trials that the survivors had to go through. My only minor complaint about the film was that I would have liked to see the real survivors get interviewed instead of John Malkovich (as great as an actor he is). I think the movie would have been that much more personal if the actual people recounted what had happened to them. If I had not rewatched this movie again, I would have easily labeled it as “that one movie where the plane crash survivors ate each other.” But now I know better and I consider it a dishonor to those who survived to label the film merely as that. This is a harrowing and haunting picture but there were definitely signs of uplift and hope which highlight the human spirit.
