American newspapers could not run the most grisly images from the
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. They were simply
too shocking. I eventually saw a series of shots in a French photo magazine,
and the scenes were of unimaginable horror. One was especially haunting, even
to this day: a vast plain of compressed debris, made of splintered wood and
torn metal, and in almost every patch, extending upward from the rubble, were
dead hands and feet.
The earthquake-triggered tsunamis did not just wipe out beach
communities and small towns, but whole islands and the populations that lived
on them — more than 230,000 people. Whispers of this kind of destruction hit Japan last year, but what happened in 2004 in
places like Indonesia , Sri Lanka and Thailand was an ear-crushing yell.
It’s within this devastating disaster that The Impossible takes place. We meet a family on vacation: husband
and wife Maria (Naomi Watts) and Henry (Ewan McGregor) and their three young
boys. They’re in Thailand ,
at a beautiful beach resort with sandy beaches and fields of palm trees.
Director Juan Antonio Bayona (The
Orphanage) does not torture us by delaying the inevitable tsunami; it hits
fairly quickly once the family lands on the island.
As wonderful as Watts is, it is child-actor Holland who really shines here as the
receding waters reveal a post-apocalyptic nightmare. His Lucas is strong and resolute,
and he bears a tremendous weight on his young shoulders as he helps his wounded
mother limp out of this chaos. They eventually get to a crowded hospital, where
a language barrier and the sheer scale of the disaster complicate their rescue.
A beautiful scene involves Lucas as he races around the hospital to help a man
locate his son. As he calls out the boy’s name, arms reach out to him from
gurneys and injured survivors ask him to add new names to his list. Within a
couple of minutes, he’s reading whole rosters of names out, desperately trying
to reunite at least a single family, even while his own is fractured and lost.
The movie is based on a real family that experienced a miraculous
— and, yes, impossible — resolution to one of the worst natural disasters ever
recorded. I’m a little troubled that the film makes no effort to show the
struggles of the locals. In fact it seems to even go out of its way to only
feature white families from Spain ,
France and Germany . The
Thai people are almost an afterthought, and occasionally they’re villains as
they mess up doctor’s orders and separate Lucas from his mother in a cruel way
that seemed to be added to the plot only for dramatic effect. Certainly people
from Thailand , Sri Lanka and Indonesia lost more, and their
stories deserved more recognition.
That withstanding, The
Impossible is an incredible story of courage and survival, and it will warm
your soul as you witness young children grapple with adult issues amid a
disaster so large and fierce. The acting is impressive, even from the
youngsters, as are the special effects, which convey the magnitude of the
tsunami without sacrificing the film’s rather narrow viewpoint on one family.
Other than a brief segment in Clint Eastwood’s 2010 drama Hereafter, the Indian
Ocean tsunami has not made its way into many films. I’m glad this
movie exists, if only to show people how horrible the tsunami was and how resilient
the human spirit is.
