The Impossible
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona
Written by Sergio G. Sánchez and María Belón
with Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Ewan McGregor
2012
The Impossible centres on the experiences of a family holidaying in Thailand over Christmas 2004, the year an earthquake in the Indian Ocean caused the deadliest tsunami on record to sweep through South-East Asia. The instant impulse when you see this sort of thing advertised is of course to avoid a schmaltzy cash-in on a human story that ‘deserves to be told’, but, ignoring that aspect of the film, this is pretty gripping.
There’s not much to explain about the premise: the Bennett family are spending Christmas at a Thai resort, only for a huge tidal wave to sweep through the land on Boxing Day, killing or maiming thousands and separating the family. The mother, Maria (Naomi Watts), and her eldest son Lucas (Tom Holland) find themselves in a waterlogged wasteland, apparently miles from where they were first hit, while her husband Henry (Ewan McGregor), and two younger children Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast), are left among the wreckage of their hotel. From there each group must find safety and medical attention, and hopefully find out what happened to their missing loved ones.
Apart from being comparatively fortunate and featuring one amazing coincidence, the family’s story can’t really be said to ‘deserve’ cinematic treatment more than that of any of the thousands of other families who actually were torn apart that day, except that it allows for a happy ending. I personally never really buy that explanation for productions based on recent, real human tragedies, unless they’re going to give all the profits to a survivors’ fund or something. Yet for what it is, The Impossible is a respectful and actually quite restrained dramatic thriller. McGregor and Watts may be big names but, onscreen at least, never seem particularly attention-seeking, and apart from being unnaturally photogenic do a good job of not making themselves the centre of the film. Similarly, the script might be by-the-numbers but it never makes this family’s story seem somehow more important than the rest of the carnage, and the direction (by The Orphanage’s Juan Antonio Bayona) is imaginative without drawing attention to itself. The shots of bodies being swept along underwater amidst swirling jagged debris are heart-stopping.
So it’s pretty insubstantial. And morally disingenuous. But for all that quite a lot of care has gone into making it, and into making it sensitively, and it’s undeniably powerful in its depiction of the tsunami’s aftermath: the film is explicit in its depiction of the death toll and the horrific injuries people sustained, but you never get the sense those things are being pored over for shock value.
Tom
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