The Making Of
Director Gonzalo Arijón talks about the process of creating "mind pictures" instead of reenactments, addressing the taboo topic of what the survivors ate during their 72-day ordeal and one survivor’s surprise announcement at the crash site, 34 years after the accident.
What led you to make this film?
As a Uruguayan, I felt very close to this story from the beginning. I was about 15 years old when the plane crash happened, and it made a deep impact on me. I was very impressed when the Survivors “came back to life,” because I knew some of them personally.
Later, as the Survivors returned to their normal lives again, I continued to follow their story quite closely. I gradually got to know some of them better—men like Roberto Canessa, Gustavo Zerbino, Fernando Parrado and Carlitos Paez. I always felt—apart from the very good book by Piers Paul Read—that the way the world’s media handled this story (the few documentaries and journalistic reports here and there) was much less powerful than the story had the potential to be. This is especially true after being with the Survivors and hearing their version of what they had gone through “up there,” as they called the crash site.
Even the film Alive was just an anecdote aimed at a mass audience. So, as the years went by, I felt there was still a film to be made; a film that would benefit from the serenity that the Survivors had by now acquired to talk about the experience…after 30 years had passed.
I said to myself that this film would be not only about the facts but also about what the Survivors have made of this experience—because somewhere in there lies a parable on the human condition and also on the incredible strength that a group of people can acquire when they really come together.
…Despite all the earlier attempts that had been made to tackle the subject, it seemed…essential to make this film…especially because of my close links with the group. It seemed this film would fulfill a number of objectives: first, of course, it would be my film, my reading of these events. Second, it would also be their film, a film in which the Survivors would be able to truly recognize themselves for the first time.
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What were some of the challenges you faced in making this film?
The first challenge was to put each of the Survivors in the right state of mind to allow them to be mentally back up there on the mountain, 30 years ago. This would help them…tell me what happened. ...Not just the facts, but also their feelings, their doubts…as if they were back up there again…. But I didn’t want them to mix it up—to mix up their reflections and comments with the facts as they had experienced them. So, the first challenge was to clear their testimony, to make them take out all traces of hindsight, to try and get them to transmit to me, in the most untainted way possible, the different states of mind, feelings and sensations they experienced during those 72 days locked up there in the snow.
The second big challenge was how to show visually this closed world in which they survived for 72 days. …I wanted to avoid at all costs anything pretending to be a reconstruction. There was no intention of recreating the events—but I felt that it was necessary to give some scenes a cinematographic and personal interpretation based on the sensations and testimonies that the Survivors had transmitted to me….
I tried to create…a visual interpretation of their closed world in the snow, something more sensorial, a climate, not a direct reenactment—no dialogues, no attempt to use the young actors to represent specific characters. Not a fiction film, but rather something that would try to capture memories, or rather, mind pictures.
So…this was the second great challenge of the film…to include in the film non-documentary, non-feature film sequences that come from the mind pictures that the interviews inspired in me.
How did you gain the trust of the subjects in your film?
For a start, I felt that I had to make the film with ALL the Survivors because they are a group and it’s the story of the group…all their testimonies are equally important and precious.… At the outset, I made my proposal to the whole of the group, and this was the first time this had happened. In the past, in previous journalistic pieces or documentaries, there has always been a selection process and the same members of the group have usually been chosen by the media—the ones who talk the most brilliantly, the ones who have the most exciting story to tell. And many of the others have remained silent for many years.
So the fact that it was to be a film about the group, that I was friends with four or five of them, that I came from the same town, that for the first time it would be the view of a fellow Uruguayan who’s close to them rather than the view of someone from far away who would tend to sensationalize the story—I think all of this played a big part.
I suggested that we make a film together, a documentary film in which they would be able to recognize themselves. Of course, I knew I was taking a big risk—the risk of using a large number of characters. Sixteen characters…is a lot for a single film, even without including the other interviewees directly involved. Altogether, there are about 25 characters—that’s very hard to manage, but I took on the risk. A lot of producers and friends warned me of the big risk I was taking by including so many characters. But I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
I also told the Survivors that they would be shown the film before anyone else saw it and that if any of the sequences or moments in the film posed a problem, then we’d work together to sort it out. It was a film to be based on trust, and they gave me their trust.
How did you approach bringing the issue of cannibalism into the film?
In fact, the word “cannibalism” is incorrect here. The right word is “necrophagy,” the difference being that necrophagy is to eat a body already dead; the other cannibalism is to kill someone so as to eat him. Clearly, this is by far the most delicate part of the story. It touches on a matter that is a taboo, not just in the West but, as far as I know, universally and all through the ages.
…On this subject, I didn’t push them but let them say what they wanted without making any demands on them at all. Each time the subject came up in the interviews, I left them a big space, gave them the freedom to say what they wanted without directing them or pressing them to get any kind of result in the journalistic sense.
I didn’t give them a hard time when they came to talk about this subject. I was silently affectionate. I sympathized with how difficult it was for them. And I think that my affectionate attitude towards them, my attitude of sharing with them—of not being diametrically opposed to them like a journalist determined to get a sensationalistic story out of them—helped them to express this part in their own words and in a way they felt comfortable about.
Sometimes silences and looks are as important in the film as words. And in fact this technique—which isn’t a technique but rather an attitude of mine—has brought results because they felt so comfortable during these interviews, so understood…. They…were able to find ways of being more and more precise about this subject…each found his own vocabulary to talk about it. For some, it was a very concrete description; for others, it was very metaphorical.
So my technique for this subject matter was to silently accompany them, to help them talk about this very special experience—the experience of necrophagy. And I think it was this attitude of mine that made it possible to get from them testimonies of such enormous quality.
What would you have liked to include in the film that didn’t make the cut?
At the beginning I thought the film would be a lot less the story of what had happened and much more the moral of this story. How had what had happened to them affected their subsequent lives? What lessons had they learned from the experience? How had they endeavored to talk about it to their children and the people close to them? In the beginning, I thought this was the story of the film I would make.
Then, as time passed, I discovered that people—especially young people, and people in general who might have seen the film Alive, which is a very condensed version of the story—only remembered the main “headline,” which was that…a group of people were lost up in the mountains for a long time and had resorted to anthrophagy (cannibalism). And that was about all.
So I decided that if this story was going to be really interesting, it had to be told through the events and through the detail of these events.… In fact, the film swung in a completely different direction—a direction where what matters are the details of the events, details so numerous and so subtle that it’s quite gripping to hear how the Survivors reacted to each new element of their 72-day ordeal.
I came to the conclusion that the story had to function almost exclusively as the story of what had happened and that…the moral of the story, what the Survivors had done with the experience, …had to be suggested almost exclusively by the way in which they told the story of the events themselves rather than as some kind of a long epilogue.
…Now in STRANDED, the story has been told as never before by all the Survivors with a tiny epilogue at the very end. So, although at first I regretted not being able to develop this moral side of the story…I decided that this was another film and that my film is the story, in great detail, and told 30 years after the event, in an atmosphere of great trust. A great number of subjects are only touched upon or suggested. A great many are left without answers, and if people go to see the film wanting to find out the answers to some of these questions, well, this is not that kind of film.
But it’s a film that talks a great deal about human values—both individual and collective. It’s a film about…the way the group works today that is visible through a number of small sequences—a joke between them, a smile or a look rather than through great declarations. So, the regret I thought I would feel at the lack of philosophical elements has left me, and anyway, I prefer films that leave you to think about these things after the film is over. …Films aren’t supposed to give you all the answers, but rather to transmit feelings and sensations so that you go on working on them after you’ve left the cinema.
Tell us about a scene in the film that especially moved or resonated with you.
Obviously, the moments in the film when the idea—that was a completely crazy one for them, too—that it might be necessary to eat their dead friends, and the process of going from talking about it to actually doing it, is a major moment in the film, as well as a major one in the experience they all lived through. It is, after all, the transgression of one of humankind’s greatest taboos.
Each time we reached this point in the interviews—the point at which they would talk about the difference between the idea of doing it and the actual act—each time it was very emotional, very difficult, very powerful. We both felt at this moment that we were dealing with something which was quite unknown and that went against all the rules.
And, I’m not talking just about in the interviews, but also about how it would be handled in this series of images that I had decided to make to accompany these testimonies. And this very free adaptation of what had happened was a very difficult scene to film with these young actors, with the film crew itself.
I remember, it was a winter afternoon—a Saturday afternoon—and we shot most of this scene on a sand dune on a beach not far from Montevideo, using an old wreck of a plane. Several of the Survivors had turned up by chance… with their wives and children to visit the location and watch the filming, which they imagined would be a bit of fun. …They came face to face with the shooting of the scene where the idea (of eating the bodies) becomes a reality. So this was a very difficult, powerful moment of the filming—for us and for them.
Some of them found it too hard to bear and left. Some stayed there, stoically, to watch the scene, and others, like Roberto Canessa, came up to us and kindly pointed out some ways of making the scene more accurate, of transmitting what had happened more faithfully. So this scene, both in the interviews and later when it was filmed, was the most challenging of all.
Were there any technical challenges you faced while shooting, and if so, how did you resolve them?
The biggest technical challenge was…how were we to bring to life this closed world, this huis clos up there at 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) on the mountain in a believable way.
So with our modest means, this challenge involved changing the high Andes for a little dune of 2.5 meters (eight feet) above sea level, not far from Montevideo. We exchanged the snow storms for sand storms, which we were lucky enough to get since we chose to film during the worst part of winter…and to make this little dune serve, thanks to the enormous efforts of the crew, the actors and, of course and above all, to the talent of César Charlone, the director of photography. We needed to make it not realistic but rather dream-like with a strangeness about the climaxes of these images that would lead people to stop wondering about whether we were high in the Andes or not.
It works, and people get carried along by this white, overexposed universe, which tells the story without words, which paints a general feeling of climax and which, in my view, works absolutely.
…I think that this was the best possible solution, which just goes to show that sometimes, a limited budget forces one to find extraordinarily interesting solutions. I remember saying to the Survivors themselves when we saw these images for the first time that I couldn’t have done better if I’d had all the money in the world.
What has the audience response been so far? Have the people featured in the film seen it, and if so, what did they think?
So far the film has only been seen by the Survivors, their families and the crew. They’ve all been very appreciative of the film—especially the Survivors, who say that they really recognize themselves in the film for the first time.
They…recognize it as a choral work, a chorus of different voices talking about the same events, often with surprisingly similar emotions and reactions. Often, an idea is begun by one of them and followed through by another and sometimes finished off by a third…I found this pretty amazing when I was in the process of editing the film. There were so many similarities in the way each of them felt at different moments of their ordeal.
The independent film business is a difficult one. What keeps you motivated?
Making documentary films has been my passion for over 20 years…. It’s so exciting that I can’t imagine not continuing with this task. Yet it’s doubly difficult; independent films are hard to make and independent documentary films even harder. This is the most difficult branch of filmmaking—and also the least well funded. …It isn’t just a question of witnessing things…it’s being able to express a personal viewpoint of what’s happening in the world. It’s difficult, yes, but maybe that’s an advantage, because I don’t know many easy things that are exciting to do.
Why did you choose to present your film on public television?
I think public television has a major role to play in today’s world… The private channels are mostly devoted to what is spectacular and sensational…out to grab the viewers…more dedicated to what goes on below the belt than to what goes on above it.
…This is why public television…needs to be liberated from these market forces and from what is popular and easy. I am one of those who believes…that public television must be given a major role in today and tomorrow’s world and be a television viewing option that is intelligent, sensitive and that respects the viewer and whose mission it is to inform, to form, to educate in a delicate, refined and intelligent way.
…The fact that STRANDED has been co-produced and is to be transmitted by public television in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium…I consider an honor because I think that the human values I am defending in the film are what I admire in public television.
Is there anything more you’d like to share in this Q&A?
In the summer of 2006, we made the trip with four of the Survivors, some of their children and all the crew on horseback from Argentina up to the actual spot where the accident took place—a journey that took two days on horseback to get there and another two days to get back… I suggested that we should sleep two nights up on the mountain, something they had never done since the accident because it isn’t exactly a welcoming spot!
…On the second night…one of the Survivors, Ramón “Moncho” Savella, said…that he wanted to make an announcement. “It’s something rather serious,” he said, “so I’m going to make it with a magnum of champagne.”…
He broke open the magnum of champagne and we all stared at him anxiously—I thought he might be about to announce some serious illness. Then he said that the “bad news” was that he was finally going to get married! He was the last chronically single man in the group—a kind of playboy, but at 54 years old, it gets a bit tough to be one. And so he had decided to make the announcement up there—at 4,000 meters at the site of the accident—that he was about to get married. I’ll never forget that icy champagne we drank there in the freezing cold.
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