Stranded
Last night I watched "Stranded: I’ve come from a plane that crashed on the mountains" at the SFIFF. This is a documentary about the plane that crashed over the Andes in 1972, and was the source for the book and the movie 'Alive!"
There was no film footage from this crash, only a few snapshots that the survivors took with a found camera. Therefore the film told the story through recounts of the survivors along with dramatizations of some of the events that took place.
At the same time as telling the original story, the film follows the survivors as they fly back to the Argentinian border and hike up to the crash site for the first time since their rescue. Most of the interviews from the survivors are during this trip which made it a lot more interesting than if it were just in their homes or a studio.
Despite the shortage of original recorded material (film, photos, audio) I still felt the story was well told and kept a steady (though sometimes a tad lethargic) pace. I think the one thing that could have been improved a bit was the soundtrack. You know the very top keys of a piano? Apparently they're for playing dramatically, one at a time in the score of an airplane crash documentary. It definitely gave a sense of the cold and desolation, but after 30min of this two hour film, I think I was feeling as cold and deserted as I was going to get.
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