The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Features  |  Reviews
Best2012Vote-1000x50

Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains

A redundant, overlong documentary
By GERALD PEARY  |  November 11, 2008
2.0 2.0 Stars

Stranded_inside.jpg


The story has been told already, and vividly, in Piers Paul Read's Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Not to mention Frank Marshall's 1993 movie adaptation. So there's something redundant about Gonzalo Arijón’s overlong documentary.

It offers, through talking-head interviews and sometimes dubious dramatic re-creations, the amazing tale of 16 survivors of a 1972 air crash in the frozen Andes. Most were spoiled, rich college students. Now they are wise, articulate, white-haired fathers and grandfathers.

The best thing about Stranded is that it makes so little of what this crash is infamous for: the survivors had to devour the flesh of those who died before them. In the middle of the movie, each survivor explains why and how he did it, and then the "cannibalism" is passed over for what were more pressing problems — how those remaining could make contact with civilization and be saved.

Spanish | 126 minutes | Kendall Square

Related: Ashes of Time Redux, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, I’ve Loved You So Long, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Transportation, Accidents and Disasters, Air Disasters,  More more >
| More

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 02/15 ]   The Addams Family  @ Shubert Theatre
[ 02/15 ]   "Aphrodite and the Gods of Love"  @ Museum of Fine Arts
[ 02/15 ]   Green Eyes  @ Ames Hotel
ARTICLES BY GERALD PEARY
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2012: ANIMATED  |  February 08, 2012
    One film stands out among the Animated Shorts, Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby's Wild Life .
  •   REVIEW: THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2012: LIVE ACTION  |  February 07, 2012
    The Oscar nominees for Live Action Shorts come down to five conventional narratives.
  •   REVIEW: ALBERT NOBBS  |  January 26, 2012
    Lesbianism doesn't exist as a cogent category in 19th century Ireland, which could explain why Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), a woman disguised for years as a man and employed as a Dublin waiter, has no personal understanding of who she is, her identity, or what she feels.
  •   REVIEW: SILENT SOULS  |  January 17, 2012
    This is probably the only film we'll encounter about the Merja culture of West Central Russia, a Finno-Ugric tribe in which even the most modernized people pay allegiance to ancient customs.
  •   REVIEW: HELL AND BACK AGAIN  |  January 05, 2012
    Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Hell and Back Again offers a potent documentary correlative to the narrative of The Hurt Locker .

 See all articles by: GERALD PEARY

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed