A film review by Craig J. Koban January 30, 2013 |
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THE IMPOSSIBLE
Henry: Ewan McGregor /
Maria: Naomi Watts /
Lucas: Tom Holland /
Simon: Oaklee Pendergast /
Old woman: Geraldine Chaplin |
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If
you excuse its too-on-the-nose title, THE IMPOSSIBLE is an
unflinchingly
harrowing, heart-rending, and tour de force recreation of one of the most
devastating natural disasters in all of human history.
We all remember the day in question: On December 26, 2004 an
undersea earthquake – the third largest ever recorded by a seismograph
– struck in the Indian Ocean, with the epicenter being off the coast of
Sumatra, Indonesia. Coastal
communities were ravaged by 100-foot tall tidal waves and, all in all, the
tsunami killed well over 200,000 souls in 14 countries.
I’m not sure how any one film could ever possibly capture the
scale and human loss of this calamitous day. Spanish
director Juan Antonio Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE) realizes that encapsulating
the massive scope of the tsunami’s overwhelming destructive powers would
prove to be impossible, so he and his screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez have
instead opted to focus squarely on the struggles of one real life family
and their own hellish ordeal when faced with separation, mortal injuries,
and the prospects of never seeing each other alive again in the aftermath
of the tsunami. The family in question
are in fact Spanish, but they have been changed to Brits for reasons I'm not altogether certain of, which
consequentially proves to be distracting considering that the director of the film is Spanish.
Regardless of the oddly derived ethnicity of the main characters
here, THE IMPOSSIBLE still does a bravura job of immersing viewers in the
stark immediacy of their incalculably grueling and nightmarish
situation. There
is not much of an overall first, second, or third act to the film, nor is
there much in the way of expository introductory moments to the family that is a
focal point here. We are
quickly introduced to the family members – the father, Henry (Ewan
McGregor), the mother, Maria (Naomi Watts), and their three kids, Lucas
(Tom Holland), and the younger Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) and Thomas
(Samuel Joslin). They arrive
on vacation at the tropical resort of Khao Lak, Thailand a few days before
December 26. The next day
they celebrate Christmas and enjoy the sunny luxuries of their stay.
Then the tsunami hits and utterly decimates the coast, and the
entire family – as well as countless other families and resort dwellers
– are literally swept up and away from one another by the building sized
waves. The resort is left in
a state of near post-apocalyptic dilapidation. The
family finds themselves hopelessly split up and trying to make the best of
their horrendous predicament. Maria is with Thomas, the oldest child, but she has suffered
potentially life-threatening injuries and needs hospital care.
Thomas, using his wits, determination, and inner resolve, now finds
himself caring over his mother’s every need.
In the meantime, Henry and the two other younger sons are still in
what’s left of the resort and await any type of relief or rescue workers
to show up. They have no outside
communication with the world – power is down and Henry’s cell phone is
dead – so Henry takes it upon himself to send his children to a nearby
shelter while he engages in a tireless search for his wife and eldest son,
even though, deep down, he fears the worst. There
have been countless fictional disaster films over the years, which seem to
focus on visual effects first and the human misery a far distant second.
THE IMPOSSIBLE is on a whole other level in the manner
that its scenes recreating the natural disaster ring with more haunting
and shocking authenticity than just about any other similar film that
I’ve seen. Bayona created the near
ten-minute reconstruction of the Boxing Day tsunami using a
mixture of digital effects, models, and real water surges, which I think
lends so much astonishing believability to the sequence.
What emerges is a scene that feels eerily like something out of a
documentary, as Bayona thrusts the audience into the dreadful and futile
sensation of having nowhere to run or hide when faced with a massive
onslaught of water and building debris coming directly at you. What’s truly extraordinary here is how the groundbreaking
visual effects work never becomes an obtrusive or obvious element
that draws needless attention to its technique: it’s one of the most
sensationally realized and nerve-jarring sequences of the movies. Thankfully,
Bayona has pitch-perfect performances that pack a hefty emotional wallop
and intensity to compliment the superlative technological achievement of
his tsunami recreation. McGregor has always been a refined talent that seems to be
able to latch himself on to just about any role with relative ease, but
here he has to relay the monumental sensation of helplessness and misery
in his father figure without looking like he’s engaging in Oscar-nomination baiting. He
has a scene on a cell phone – provided by one selfless tourist who wants
to help him – that’s arguably one of the most agonizing and
heart-breaking phone conversations I’ve seen in a while.
Imagine that you have to relay so much information to loved ones
back home when only given mere seconds in fear of the phone battery going
dead at any moment. Two
other performances are the finest, though, the first belonging to the
indomitable presence of the great Naomi Watts, who has to evoke both a woman of
limitless bravery and downtrodden vulnerability and despair at the same
time. Even when Maria is faced with
overwhelming odds and tortuous injuries, her paternal instincts still kick
in to keep her child save. Watts
spends much of her time nearly comatose on makeshift hospital gurneys
throughout the film, but she nonetheless conveys – with so very little
dialogue – all of Maria’s resolve to stay alive in hopes of seeing her
entire family again. Tom
Holland is the other key to Watt’s tour de force work, as he has to
credibly perform off of Watts while, at the same time, traversing the
film’s largest character transformation, encapsulating Thomas going from
a smart-assed and hot-tempered pre-teen to one that has to become a brave
and intrepid figure of nurturing steadfastness to all of his
mother’s needs. There is
not one false move or emotional note in Holland’s exquisitely rendered
and touching performance here. THE IMPOSSIBLE grasps for masterful status through and through; it’s undeniably an epically staged disaster film that’s a stellar achievement in the annals of visual effects, not to mention that it’s also a gut-wrenching and deeply moving portrayal of human survival and family love (it'll be a three-hanky film for most that endure it). Yet, the film perhaps misses an opportunity to develop some of the individual family members as characters in the opening sections of the film – the tsunami comes relatively quick in the narrative and we, quite frankly, don’t learn much about these people before tragedy strikes. The film’s ultimate conclusion – which strives to be an uplifting and relatively feel-good ending – is both oddly satisfying and somewhat off-putting, perhaps in the way that it kind of overlooks the whole grievous loss of human life left in the tsunami’s wake outside of the family’s insular story (a quarter of a million other lives lost does not make for a happy ending). However, THE IMPOSSIBLE does not in any way disrespect the human tragedy of December 26, 2004. To its credit - and unlike most other cinematic tales of disaster, fictional or real – this one packs a frightening emotional veracity that few others can muster. |
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