A tragic tale, eloquently told

"Stranded: I've Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains" is an exceptional film, at once disturbing and elevating, deliberate yet powerful. It takes a story that we all think we know, one of the 20th century's most familiar tales of resilience and survival, and demonstrates that we haven't really known it at all.

"Stranded's" narrative is familiar because, under the title "Alive," it was both an internationally bestselling book and a Hollywood movie starring Ethan Hawke. Who doesn't have at least a vague knowledge of the story of the Uruguayan airliner that slammed into the Andes in 1972 and of the 16 young men who survived an unheard-of 72 days in part because they did the unthinkable and ate the flesh of those who died?

But it is only now that all the people who made it out alive agreed to talk on camera with breathtaking candor and startling detail about the nature of their experience, about what they went through and what their thoughts about it are today.

These stories do not shortchange the horror of the situation but, under the direction of Gonzalo Arijon, "Stranded" understands that out of disaster can come the purity of transcendence. Against all expectation, the survivors' experience turns out to have been a surprisingly spiritual one.

One reason these men felt safe unburdening themselves was that veteran documentarian Arijon, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, but a resident of Paris for nearly 30 years, was a boyhood friend of many of those who got on that plane on Oct. 13, 1972.

And what persuasive, articulate talkers the "Stranded" survivors turn out to be. We hang on their every word as these voices combine to remember every moment with a vividness and an immediacy that is overwhelming.

In addition to doing the interviews, Arijon had other ways of making his narrative especially effective, starting with using the film's delicate, otherworldly score by composer Florencia Di Concilio-Perrin to add a disturbing air to the proceedings.

Although this technique can be heavy-handed, as shot by cinematographer Cesar Charlone (Oscar-nominated for "City of God" and, unbelievably, nearly a passenger on that plane) the scenes are quietly effective.

Quiet is the operative word: Because no one in the re-creations talks on camera, the sequences come off as dreamlike and haunting, which is as they should be.

The re-creations are also an effective companion piece to "Stranded's" contemporary footage, which follows the survivors as they take a summertime trip back to the Valley of Tears in the Andes, the original crash site, and try to convey to their children the nature of the experience.

These men were just 19 in 1972, members of a rugby team associated with a Catholic school, headed for a game in Santiago, Chile, and what they thought would be a weekend "full of adventure and excitement."

The crash itself killed 12 of the 45 passengers, and numerous others gradually died from injuries and starvation. When those alive heard on their still-functioning radio that the search for them had been abandoned, they came around with tremendous reluctance to the notion of what they had to do to survive.