Guillermo del Toro and J.A. Bayona reunite to talk about the latter’s Oscar-nominated film, Society of the Snow.
Director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible) was 19 years old when he visited the Sitges Film Festival in his home country of Spain and found an opportunity to bond with a Mexican filmmaker debuting his horror film, Cronos. That director was Guillermo del Toro, and it was then that he and Bayona forged a friendship that would span decades.
Throughout the years since, Bayona and del Toro have shared a close personal and professional relationship, finding in each other a creative equal whose opinions were always welcome. Recently the two award-winning directors sat down to discuss Bayona’s latest film, the Oscar-nominated survival epic Society of the Snow, which follows the survivors of a real-life plane crash in the Andes mountains in 1972 that left the surviving passengers with little more than hope that they would eventually be rescued. Society of the Snow is the most authentic retelling of the incident yet, grounded in historical research and consultations with the actual survivors, and the film is now Spain’s nominee for the Best International Film Oscar.
Del Toro and Bayona reunited for an intimate conversation about the Society of the Snow director’s process and his film’s lasting impact on both audiences and the survivors themselves.
An edited version of the conversation follows.
On set with Society of the Snow
Guillermo del Toro: What you made is an amazing film, from every point of view. I think it’s a great summation of where you are as a filmmaker and as a person, but it is curious because, for our generation, it was a story that was very, very well-known. It was at first a tale of survival. Then, it became a sensationalized piece of news, and, finally, through the years, it has settled into a meditation on life, sacrifice, love. At what age and how did you encounter the story?
J.A. Bayona: Well, I remember that we had the original book, Alive, from Piers Paul Read. It was a book that was everywhere, at all my friends’ homes. I was too young at that age, but I remember being four or five years old and seeing those pictures [in the book] and having the impression that those pictures grated on me. It was a story that everybody knew in the Spanish-speaking world. It’s a very, very popular story.
GDT: How early did you feel, “I want to make a movie about this?”
JAB: Well, I never thought I was going to do a film about it. There are already a couple of films about it, but I was preparing for The Impossible, and I really like to read a lot when I’m researching a film. That was the moment when Pablo Vierci’s book [Society of the Snow] was published in Spain and I read it and I was so moved by the story. It was a totally different story from the one I knew. The survivors started to write another book [with Vierci’s help] 35 years after the accident because they didn’t recognize themselves in the tale, in those characters, the ideas of heroism. The story was always focused on cannibalism. They didn’t recognize [themselves] in the tale, so they decided to write the book and, of course, it has the weight, the gravitas of the 35 years. It’s more of a spiritual book. It’s more about what they went through on a philosophical level, on a spiritual level, which was the challenge of making this film.
GDT: It seemed to me like writing this film did not stop even in the editing room. This is the first time I’ve seen you in the jungle, without a detailed itinerary; you were very rigorous in the directorial duties, but [also] very much trying to understand and grapple with writing it. How difficult was it?
JAB: There is that story of when a journalist asked Federico Fellini, “What is your next film about?” He answered, “I’m still trying to figure out what my previous film is about.” When you work with your heart, the most important tool for a director is intuition. Maybe I didn’t know exactly how to articulate the story, but I was able to as I felt it. A whole exploration on that, on finding the essence of the story. I was not interested in the fact; I was interested in what was the essence. What were the spiritual roots of this story?
I remember one line from the survivors talking about the moment of the avalanche. How they had spirits near to death in that moment. [The survivor] told me, “Reality is not enough, only dreaming.” It was about that. Finding the way to get the story into this spiritual approach, which was to find the perspective of the story. To tell the story through the voices of the dead. That’s the sense of wonder that makes the story spiritual.
The plane on set
GDT: The real story is surviving spiritually and as a spiritual entity. The only way these people can survive is by becoming a group.
JAB: I was telling the actors not to look up, but to look to the sides because everything above has abandoned you. The only thing that you have is the others. But to me, [that’s only the first] step. One step beyond that is to understand not only the group, but to understand that you and the others are the same. That’s the essence of the story. This whole search, this whole exploration [in the process of making] this film was to understand that at the heart of every single decision in the story was the understanding that you and I are the same thing.
GDT: I think, in order to get there, you have to take the audience through the physical hardships. One of the feats it achieves beautifully is that it feels real, and you take the audience step by step through each of those horrible reversals. They survive, not once, not twice, not thrice, but many times: two avalanches, one crash, this and that. If you don’t chronicle that journey so precisely, so truthfully, it’s very hard to get there. This is incredibly complicated to transmit sensorially to the audience. What are the tools that you wanted to use?
JAB: For me, the most effective tool was the actors. Basically, I decided to put everything at the service of the performance. We created this [film where] the journey of the survivors was also a journey for the actors. They traveled to a different country. They spent six months out of home. They went through the hunger, the loneliness, the cold.
We shot in real locations, chronologically. They were following this strict diet and you can tell that the most effective tool is always when you see that in the eyes, when you see it in the way the bodies change. Like getting to the spiritual through the physical.
GDT: I mean, look, I’ve been doing movies for 30 years, 45 since I started my short films, and if somebody said, “You’re going to do this movie.” I would say, “No, thank you.” It’s very, very complicated technically, very complicated thematically. Then on top of that, you chose to use actors that are very green.
JAB: Guillermo, the stories that you love, you don’t choose them.
J.A. Bayona
GDT: They choose you, of course. You have the duty to do it this way. What prompted you to choose actors that were without much experience or a way of doing things?
JAB: Well, when you look for actors that are Uruguayans and Argentinians in that age group; there are not many popular faces. Also, I didn’t want to have a popular face in the middle of the group because I didn’t want to have a protagonist. I choose to have a narrator, but I don’t like to call him the protagonist. He’s more like the eyes.
GDT: There is also a great decision in the way you lens the movie. The group is the close-up. You said it very wisely, you have a lead character, but the protagonist is the group.
JAB: Actually, there was a moment on set when we shot the avalanche: We had such a small space to shoot that we didn’t have enough space for the camera. I went with these probe lenses. By doing so, I had space to put at least two people around the camera with that thing. With these lenses, everything is in focus. It was beautiful to see the compositions because when you put them in the 2:55 aspect ratio, which is the widest one I’ve ever done, it looks like that’s the landscape that you have; you don’t see the mountains anymore. That’s the moment of the avalanche where we are buried under the snow. The bodies and the faces become the landscape and everything; everybody has the same focus. There is no person that is more important than the other ones.
GDT: You and I talked many times as your career moved and I kept saying, “Bayona, you’ve got to go back to doing one in Spanish.” It is this one, which couldn’t be more fortuitous and beautiful because, in this instance, the language is music and rhythm.
JAB: It was the Uruguayan accent from the 70s, very specific. We had to really get into that culture. The songs that you hear on the radio are the songs that the guys were listening to — the political context, everything was important to understand the journey. This is one of those stories that if you understand the context, if you are able to take the audience into that plane and make them feel the hunger, all the primitive fears that they went through, they will understand what they did.
Behind the scenes with Enzo Vogrincic
GDT: This movie has been chosen to represent Spain in the Academy Awards, which is a great responsibility and something very beautiful. It represents people who are alive. I’m sure this movie is healing. Tell me a little bit about that, about both aspects, representing Spain and being so joyously received there and your way and the survivors’ reaction to the movie.
JAB: To represent Spain is a privilege, especially after 16 years without shooting in my language. I’ve been trying to do this film for 10 years. Finally, I was able to do it and to go back home. I’m coming from shooting movies for studios outside of Spain for eight years. Going back home and getting love from your people is always something very beautiful.
This is a story that is so important for the survivors and the families of the victims. We decided before going to Venice, before the world premiere, that the first people to see that film had to be these people. We went to Montevideo and we put 300 people in a theater, 300 people, all families related to the accident.
We were so scared. No one has ever read a single line of the script. The survivors had already seen the film, and it was a very intense film. They knew, so they were also very nervous, but the applause was so incredible at the end. What was more incredible to me, what was impressive — and that can tell you about the power of fiction, the power of film — [is what we] said at the beginning: “Reality is not enough, only dreaming.” By doing a film that takes them through this journey and allows them to get into that plane, very close to all of them, the living and the dead, they were able to go through this ordeal. They were so grateful because for a lot of people it was the first time they understood how hard it was for the other ones.
GDT: Yes, of course.
JAB: There were people that, after 50 years. heard the survivors crying. I remember one of them [saying], “I don’t know if I cried for my brother or for you.”
