Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains (***1/4)

If you saw the underrated drama Alive, you know this story: a Uruguayan rugby team crashes in the Andes en route to Chile, is forced into cannibalism to survive. For this well-edited documentary, the survivors of the 1972 plane crash reunite on the mountain and tell their story.

Watching this was a lot like watching the feature film. There is something perfect about the story. The plane crashes in the mountains, but in such a way that most of the 45 passengers are not killed immediately. Yet they wind up in a place least conducive to either short-term rescue or long-term survival. Besides having to subsist on the remains of the dead, there are other perils.

Although modest photographic re-creations prevent this from being solely a parade of talking heads, the experience is not as visceral as watching Alive. As with that movie, the many characters blend together. In a way, that’s the point. Having to act as one was what enabled them to live to tell the tale. The bond the survivors have maintained—each participated in the movie—is nearly as remarkable, a testament to the uniqueness of their death-defying tale.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 12/18/08

Blindsight (**1/2)

More inspiring than compelling, this documentary tells the story of six blind Tibetan teens who set out to climb a peak near Mount Everest. The attempt was the brainchild of Erik Weihenmayer, who’d been the first blind person to climb Everest. Weihenmayer had been invited to visit Tibet by Sabriye Tenberken, a German native, also blind, who had singlehandedly created a braille alphabet for Tibetans and begun a program called Braille Without Borders to teach blind children English and other subjects. Tenberken is an amazing woman whose own story probably would have been worth devoting more time to. The superstition surrounding blindness in Tibet—it’s typically regarded as a punishment for the sins in a past life—makes her work all the more valuable. As for the movie, the footage of the mountain is striking, and the conflict between the goals of the students and their sighted guides brings the story to a somewhat surprising conclusion. But I felt like a long 60 Minutes segment probably would have done it as much justice.

IMDB link

viewed 3/11/08; reviewed 3/13/08