Title: The Impossible
Directed by: J. A. Bayona
Distributed by: Warner Brothers (Spain) and Summit Entertainment (US)
Release Date: October 11, 2012 (Spain)
Rated: PG-13
Synopsis: An account of a family caught, with tens of thousands of strangers, in the mayhem of one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time. (Via IMDB)
Shaunta’s Review: The Impossible is a Spanish movie about one family’s experience during the December 26, 2004 Tsunami in Thailand. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor are a couple with three sons. They’re English, but live in Japan. They’re on a Christmas holiday a Thai resort.
Of course, disaster hits. The disaster itself is a triumph. I won’t be surprised if Spain becomes a big player in special effects after this film. The tsunami was delivered to the audience in horrific, amazing detail. It was unnervingly real.
In the story, the father and the two very young (I think 5 and 7-year-old) sons are separated from the mother and the older (15-year-old) son. The film is mainly about the mother and son getting to safety and the father trying to find them.
There were a couple of problems in the movie for me, but I’ll talk about those in a few minutes. I first want to say that this was one of the most heart-wrenching, moving movies I’ve ever seen. It made it impossible for me not to put myself into the situation. I actually had trouble sleeping the night after I saw it, because I kept having terrible dreams–not about tsunamis or natural disasters, but about the aftermath, and the terrible decisions that have to be made.
The special effects, one more time, were incredible. The mother had a terrible leg wound that was so realistically depicted, it was hard to see. The exhaustion and fear were palpable from everyone involved. The conditions in the hospital. The sheer number of devastated people. I was very, very glad that the trailers spoiled the fact that the family gets back together at the end, because I don’t think I could have made it through the movie if I didn’t know that.
I’m going to talk about the casting below, but I do want to say that Tom Holland as the older son, Lucas, was spectacular. He stole the show. He was the center of the cast, and just gave a very strong performance.
There were two things that bugged me, though. The first was a scene toward the middle, when the dad sends his two tiny boys alone, in the dark, on a truck to a refugee camp in the mountains. I get that he felt like he needed to look for his wife and son. But I was so shocked when it happened that it pulled me right out of the movie. I’m not sure if that happened in real life, or if it was dramatic effect. I cannot imagine any circumstance, including that one, where I’d send my little kids off alone into the Thai night in the midst of a terrible disaster.
The other problem I had was a confusion as to why this Spanish movie, based on the life of a Spanish family, (the photo at the end shows a dark haired, olive skinned family), had such an anglicized cast. McGregor and Watts had great chemistry, but it made no sense to me why a Spanish actress and actor couldn’t have been cast. In fact, nearly every character in the film was white. The ‘natives’ were there to help, and were shown in a very good light, but the hospital was full of white people. The people looking, with the dad, for their loved ones were nearly all white. I’m curious, more than anything, about why this was the way the casting went. Did the powers that be think that an English family would be more well-received than a Spanish family?
Over all, this was a movie I won’t forget for a long time. If you’re especially sensitive, be aware that this is an incredibly intense movie about disaster and the aftermath of disaster. It pulls no punches.
