The Impossible

Film (2012)

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

Screenplay by Sergio G. Sánchez
Story by María Belón

With Naomi Watts (Maria), Ewan McGregor (Henry), Tom Holland (Lucas), Samuel Joslin (Thomas), Oaklee Pendergast (Simon)

Ewan McGregor in The Impossible — Ewan McGregor as Henry
in “The Impossible”
©2012 Telecinco Cinema

An account of a family in Thailand during the tsunami of December, 2004, based on a true story.

Maria and Henry are parents of three young boys. They are vacationing in Thailand when the tsunami hits. Separated by the floods, they face challenges to their survival as individuals and as a family.

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean that devastated Asia in 2004 was an horrific event that claimed the lives of over 230,000 people in fourteen countries.

Here is the story of a single European family, on vacation at a Thai beach resort, struggling to survive and to deal with the terrible after effects of that devastating event.

There are many realistic scenes of the onslaught of the catastrophe and its follow up. The special effects are quite dramatic and effective.

Naomi Watts and in The Impossible — Naomi Watts as Maria
Tom Holland as Lucas
in “The Impossible”
©2012 Telecinco Cinema

The principals, Naomi Watts (Maria) and Ewan McGregor (Henry), are good actors and appealing to watch, but they are severely underused in this highly sentimentalized treatment.

Mawkish music blares throughout the film, ensuring pervasive sappiness throughout whatever moments may have otherwise avoided the consistently melodramatic direction.

The film is based on the actual experience of a Spanish family, but, oddly, English actors were chosen to portray them, without any seeming justification.

The story of this Spanish family is, to be sure, an amazing one. However, almost the entire story in this film is about this single family facing the disaster, during and afterwards, save a small subplot about the survival of a child not in the family. There is little or nothing about the native Thais and what they went through.

This treatment, unfortunately, responds to this family saga, and this very real disaster, with a kind of overwrought emotional tone that, in the end, carries little weight.

Post viewing analysis - contains spoilers

The most vivid moment of moral drama in this film involves the saving of another boy by Maria and Lucas. Originally, petrified of the flood, Lucas argues for self-survival and for continuing without heeding the cries of the boy, which would take them towards, not away, from the floods; but Maria insists they try to save the boy, which they do. Later, seeing the saved boy in the restored company of his family, the son acknowledges the moral lesson. It is a nice moment, but there is something too consciously didactic in the writing to make it powerful.

A narrative flaw surfaces when, after coming out of the initial flood with two of his sons, Thomas and Simon, Henry separates from them and leaves them in the company of others to search for Maria and Lucas. Thomas (Samuel Joslin) pleads with Henry, very compellingly, not to leave them; I totally sympathized. After such a trauma, the poor kid could not take any more separation. The father does, however, leave them and the script does not subsequently make a big deal about it. However, when Lucas leaves Maria for a few minutes in the hospital, she disappears unexpectedly, and a tragic and dramatic note is sounded until she is found. This is an odd inconsistency in the telling, and exhibits the peculiarities in writing that make this script far less powerful than it might have been.

– BADMan

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