Movie review: The Impossible

There have been few films with as powerful a first act as The Impossible. Clint Eastwood's Hereafter dipped its toe in the water, so to speak, when it opened with some rough footage of a tsunami making landfall and even had the camera swept away by the rough waters, the film's characters in tow. But The Impossible, a visceral film that focuses on one family during the tragedy that unfolded in Southeast Asia on Boxing Day 2004, has footage that will take your breath away.

The opening text reminds us of the tragedy we are about to see. We are introduced to the main characters, a British couple and their three young boys traveling to Thailand for their Christmas holiday, and our hearts sink collectively when we realize it is Dec. 24. The director easily, and without trickery, creates enormous suspense and makes us appreciate the family's last few moments of normality even more than they do at that moment.

We know what is coming, but no one will be prepared for the onslaught on nature as presented by director Juan Antonio Bayona. Bayona, whose last film was the disturbing but minimalist horror film The Orphanage, uses the medium sparingly to focus on tiny details that can hit just as hard as the big moments.

Shortly before the tsunami hits, the father, Henry (Ewan McGregor), is playing with his two younger sons in the swimming pool at their holiday resort. With tall palm trees all around them and the clear blue waters of the Andaman Sea just beyond the shrubs at the edge of the pool area, it seems like paradise. A guest is mixing fruit in a food processor for her smoothie, but suddenly the appliance breaks down. The power has gone off. Then there is a soft rattling noise, its origins unknown. Birds fly away. The palm trees tumble like dominoes. And then a wall of water several stories high breaks through and gushes into the swimming pool.

There are other similar scenes, staged and stitched together by someone who knows the small things can be just as important, telling and touching as the big things.

What follows is a good 10-minute stretch of panic for the characters that induces an equal measure of panic in the audience. We may have seen the pictures and watched a few YouTube videos of these disasters, but the events of 2004 in the area closest to the epicenter of the earthquake were on a scale far beyond the tragedy of the Japan tsunami in 2011. The two family members who were out of the pool when the wave decimated the luxury resort - mother Maria (Naomi Watts) and the couple's eldest son, 12-year-old Lucas (Tom Holland) - cling on to near-submerged palm trees for dear life as water gushes past them.

As the waters recede and push back once more, debris crashes into them, from streetlights and cars to tables and headboards. It is frightening, and Bayona uses sound effectively to make our stomachs turn with his audio and his visuals. Maria notices Lucas on the other side of a current and tries to swim toward him, but they are thrown about like wet rag dolls and when either one of them is pulled out to sea, the effect on the other, and on us, is positively paralyzing.

The film doesn't only focus on the details of the event but also has a firm understanding and a curiosity about the family relationship in these circumstances. How does one deal with one's own family when death is all around you? The Impossible has a few very acute observations in this regard, and although it is focused more on the immediate tragedy of losing or potentially losing one's loved ones, Lucas in particular evinces magnificent signs of growth and an ability to slowly adapt to this unknown situation thrust upon him.

Whether or not Lucas and Maria ever manage to track down the rest of their family in the aftermath of the tsunami, which saw tens of thousands of people left without any possessions, unable to speak the language of the country they were in, and shocked by the suddenness and the brutality of the event, is not the most important thing in this film.

On the contrary, the most important thing to take away from this film is its superb focus on one family's struggles while never ignoring the many others who endured similar hardships, and worse, because of the tsunami.

Despite Naomi Watts' Academy Award nomination for her role as the grief-stricken, bedridden Maria, it has to be said the acting in general (including hers) isn't anything special. Our emotional responses are mostly a result of Bayona's excellent work putting together the small patchwork of both human and natural phenomena mostly with handheld cameras to create this powerful film.

This is the first time we have come this close to understanding the devastation - and the victims' desperation - of what happened Dec. 26, 2004.

André Crous can be reached at
acrous@praguepost.com