In which Ewan McGregor kisses things for 50% of his screentime.
Director: J. A. Bayona
Writer: Sergio G. Sánchez
Cast: Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Ewan McGregor, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast
Runtime: 114 mins.
2012
Before I start the review, I should give you a comprehensive recap of this movie. Pay attention, it's going to be complicated:
This "true story" follows a British family vacationing in Thailand during the tsunami of Christmas 2004, and their efforts to find each other in the aftermath of the disaster.
As callous as it may be to mention, the subject matter of one of the most memorable natural disasters in recent memory is prime material for a devastating Hollywood treatment. Film offers an optimum medium through which to tell the story of survivors uniting to face the brutal senselessness of nature. It's an age-old tale, and a good one.
The Impossible's version centers around a single family. We meet the Bennett family on the flight to Thailand. We see them bicker without charisma or purpose. We see them bemoan work. We see them enjoy Christmas. In case it isn't apparent from my descriptions, this is a tremendously dull family. The script is to blame--the dialogue flops from the actors' mouths, as tepid as can be. The height of drama in the first twenty minutes is a brief conversation between Henry and Maria (the parents, played by Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, respectively) about how Henry is worried he might lose his job. Maria tells him he probably won't. Henry tells her they can't afford it. Maria says she can start doing doctor work again. Henry leaves to go play with the kids. This is apparently supposed to build sympathy by concerning us in the family's banal affairs, but all it really does is leave the audience wishing that our biggest concern was not being able to afford a goddamn luxurious Christmas vacation to Thailand.
Well, the Bennetts get a bigger concern when one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history strikes. I suppose one could argue that the milquetoast portrayal of our family in the first twenty minutes was supposed to make the moment of the disaster all the more jarring, but I hesitate to reward bad characterization for anything.
The moment is, nonetheless, effective. The family is lounging poolside when the massive wave, forecasted by fleeing birds and tottering objects, annihilates their hotel and drags them into chaos. What follows is one of the most thrilling action sequences I've encountered in recent memory. The scene follows Maria through the turbulent waters as she is battered by debris, striving to keep her head above water. She catches sight of her oldest son, Lucas (Tom Holland), and tries to swim to him, thwarted by the current and the detritus of shattered buildings. This scene is visceral action filmmaking at its absolute best, a traumatic experience of complete sensory immersion. You feel every injury that Maria sustains, and the desperation she channels while trying to reach her son. This is the scene that singlehandedly justifies the making and distribution of this movie.
In some ways, The Impossible is the antithesis of a movie like Castaway. Whereas Castaway, another tale of man vs. nature, is all about the aftermath of the disaster that strands Tom Hanks' character, The Impossible is centered around the disaster itself, to a fault. The sequence is so good, and the rest of the runtime so lackluster, that the film feels like an empty shell with a tiny gem rankling around on the inside.
The ballast doesn't deflate immediately, though. After the wave passes, we get a decent sequence of Maria and Lucas searching for safety. Most of the storytelling here is nonverbal, and the movie really takes its time. Bayona truly excels when directing action, but his restraint in the first post-wave sequence allows for some subtle survivalist storytelling. The injuries Maria sustained are made real, and even the simple act of climbing a tree takes tremendous effort.
Then they are rescued, and the movie kicks around in a makeshift hospital for a while, before finally shifting perspective to the other three family members. It takes an awful long time for the other shoe of "what happened to the rest of the family?" to drop, and when it does the overriding feeling is that of disappointment.
Rather than revisit the chilling tsunami sequence from a different point of view, we are given a turgid forty-five minutes of Henry searching doggedly for Maria and Lucas, while the younger boys, Thomas and Simon (Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast) are carted around from camp to camp for no apparent reason. It's boring, and seems to be about nothing more sophisticated than, "When something bad happens, husbands want to find their wives." I suppose the moral is supposed to be something about people helping each other in times of need, but that theme is communicated in a rather silly way: one stranger doesn't let Henry use his cell phone to call home, but then another better stranger does let Henry use his cell phone to call home. That stranger then looks on as Henry uses the phone call to descend into nonsensical hysterics and accomplish nothing in particular.
The movie then culminates with a ridiculous sequence in which all of the family members are in the same hospital area looking for each other, but they keep barely missing each other by turning corners at the wrong time and looking in exactly the wrong places. It's the cheapest of tactics to ratchet up dramatic tension, and the movie suffers from the absurdity of it all, so that the tearful reunion of the family, the big payoff the movie had been promising for an hour and a half, inspires a total of zero feelings whatsoever.
Are you bored hearing about this movie? Because I was bored writing about it, and I was sure as hell bored watching it. The movie so clearly exists for the tsunami sequence alone that the rest of it, from the hackneyed script to the overexposed brightness of the cinematography, feels like a Lifetime original movie. Let's talk about something more interesting.
The movie apparently tells the "true story" of a family's survival during this disaster, as it so obnoxiously overemphasizes during the opening credits. Perhaps the fact that the story is nominally "true" is the film's excuse to focus on the five white upper class Brits who survived instead of the more than 230,000 Asian people who died. Indeed, many of the secondary characters are also European vacationers, with only a few native Thai people smattered throughout the movie, apparently to add some local color. If it weren't for the garishly-filmed locale, this movie could very well have been set in the beaches of California. For a movie that is ostensibly about one of the greatest natural disasters to rock the world of modern man, it manages to skirt the tolls of the disaster more myopically than you might have thought possible.
What, after all, is "the impossible" of the title in reference to? The phrase never appears in the dialogue, as far as I can remember. Is the impossible the idea that a whole family might survive such a horrible disaster? Is it in reference to the task of tracking down the other family members, which to me seems more like an inevitability than an impossibility? Or is it in reference to the disaster itself, a horrid display of nature that is impossible to comprehend? If it is the latter, then the film communicates that impossibility quite poorly. It is obsessed with the perseverance of hope for five white people over the reality of the destruction of the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of brown people.
The movie even ends with an insurance representative loading the family onto a plane and reassuring them that their assets are well taken care of. The dream.
But then, you might argue, it is a "true story," meaning five white people did survive, and this is their story. As much as I loathe to hand wave away the ethics of what stories get told how, I would have been willing to concede that point...
If it weren't for the placard that pops up at the end of the credits, dedicating the movie to the five real life survivors... María Belón, Quique Álvarez, Lucas, Simón, and Tomás. The accompanying photograph is of five very clearly non-white people.
TheBennetts Belóns are, it turns out, a Spanish family. As someone who knew nothing about the movie before watching it, this issued like a punch to the guts from the end credits.
The folks who made this movie actually had the gall to eschew telling the story of hundreds of thousands of devastated Asian lives (in favor of five Europeans who come through their trials relatively unscathed), hide behind the moniker of a "true story," and then change the protagonists from Spaniards to Brits? This movie stinks of Oscar bait (for which it only received one nomination, Naomi Watts for Best Actress).
The Impossible is a textbook case of Hollywood's propensity for whitewashing its movies. This has been happening since the inception of film, and is still happening today. I'm not sure how much there is to say at this point beyond the obvious: This needs to stop.
But at least the tsunami scene was pretty.
1.5 / 5 BLOBS
Well, the Bennetts get a bigger concern when one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history strikes. I suppose one could argue that the milquetoast portrayal of our family in the first twenty minutes was supposed to make the moment of the disaster all the more jarring, but I hesitate to reward bad characterization for anything.
The moment is, nonetheless, effective. The family is lounging poolside when the massive wave, forecasted by fleeing birds and tottering objects, annihilates their hotel and drags them into chaos. What follows is one of the most thrilling action sequences I've encountered in recent memory. The scene follows Maria through the turbulent waters as she is battered by debris, striving to keep her head above water. She catches sight of her oldest son, Lucas (Tom Holland), and tries to swim to him, thwarted by the current and the detritus of shattered buildings. This scene is visceral action filmmaking at its absolute best, a traumatic experience of complete sensory immersion. You feel every injury that Maria sustains, and the desperation she channels while trying to reach her son. This is the scene that singlehandedly justifies the making and distribution of this movie.
In some ways, The Impossible is the antithesis of a movie like Castaway. Whereas Castaway, another tale of man vs. nature, is all about the aftermath of the disaster that strands Tom Hanks' character, The Impossible is centered around the disaster itself, to a fault. The sequence is so good, and the rest of the runtime so lackluster, that the film feels like an empty shell with a tiny gem rankling around on the inside.
The ballast doesn't deflate immediately, though. After the wave passes, we get a decent sequence of Maria and Lucas searching for safety. Most of the storytelling here is nonverbal, and the movie really takes its time. Bayona truly excels when directing action, but his restraint in the first post-wave sequence allows for some subtle survivalist storytelling. The injuries Maria sustained are made real, and even the simple act of climbing a tree takes tremendous effort.
Then they are rescued, and the movie kicks around in a makeshift hospital for a while, before finally shifting perspective to the other three family members. It takes an awful long time for the other shoe of "what happened to the rest of the family?" to drop, and when it does the overriding feeling is that of disappointment.
Rather than revisit the chilling tsunami sequence from a different point of view, we are given a turgid forty-five minutes of Henry searching doggedly for Maria and Lucas, while the younger boys, Thomas and Simon (Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast) are carted around from camp to camp for no apparent reason. It's boring, and seems to be about nothing more sophisticated than, "When something bad happens, husbands want to find their wives." I suppose the moral is supposed to be something about people helping each other in times of need, but that theme is communicated in a rather silly way: one stranger doesn't let Henry use his cell phone to call home, but then another better stranger does let Henry use his cell phone to call home. That stranger then looks on as Henry uses the phone call to descend into nonsensical hysterics and accomplish nothing in particular.
The movie then culminates with a ridiculous sequence in which all of the family members are in the same hospital area looking for each other, but they keep barely missing each other by turning corners at the wrong time and looking in exactly the wrong places. It's the cheapest of tactics to ratchet up dramatic tension, and the movie suffers from the absurdity of it all, so that the tearful reunion of the family, the big payoff the movie had been promising for an hour and a half, inspires a total of zero feelings whatsoever.
Are you bored hearing about this movie? Because I was bored writing about it, and I was sure as hell bored watching it. The movie so clearly exists for the tsunami sequence alone that the rest of it, from the hackneyed script to the overexposed brightness of the cinematography, feels like a Lifetime original movie. Let's talk about something more interesting.
The movie apparently tells the "true story" of a family's survival during this disaster, as it so obnoxiously overemphasizes during the opening credits. Perhaps the fact that the story is nominally "true" is the film's excuse to focus on the five white upper class Brits who survived instead of the more than 230,000 Asian people who died. Indeed, many of the secondary characters are also European vacationers, with only a few native Thai people smattered throughout the movie, apparently to add some local color. If it weren't for the garishly-filmed locale, this movie could very well have been set in the beaches of California. For a movie that is ostensibly about one of the greatest natural disasters to rock the world of modern man, it manages to skirt the tolls of the disaster more myopically than you might have thought possible.
What, after all, is "the impossible" of the title in reference to? The phrase never appears in the dialogue, as far as I can remember. Is the impossible the idea that a whole family might survive such a horrible disaster? Is it in reference to the task of tracking down the other family members, which to me seems more like an inevitability than an impossibility? Or is it in reference to the disaster itself, a horrid display of nature that is impossible to comprehend? If it is the latter, then the film communicates that impossibility quite poorly. It is obsessed with the perseverance of hope for five white people over the reality of the destruction of the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of brown people.
The movie even ends with an insurance representative loading the family onto a plane and reassuring them that their assets are well taken care of. The dream.
But then, you might argue, it is a "true story," meaning five white people did survive, and this is their story. As much as I loathe to hand wave away the ethics of what stories get told how, I would have been willing to concede that point...
If it weren't for the placard that pops up at the end of the credits, dedicating the movie to the five real life survivors... María Belón, Quique Álvarez, Lucas, Simón, and Tomás. The accompanying photograph is of five very clearly non-white people.
The
The folks who made this movie actually had the gall to eschew telling the story of hundreds of thousands of devastated Asian lives (in favor of five Europeans who come through their trials relatively unscathed), hide behind the moniker of a "true story," and then change the protagonists from Spaniards to Brits? This movie stinks of Oscar bait (for which it only received one nomination, Naomi Watts for Best Actress).
The Impossible is a textbook case of Hollywood's propensity for whitewashing its movies. This has been happening since the inception of film, and is still happening today. I'm not sure how much there is to say at this point beyond the obvious: This needs to stop.
But at least the tsunami scene was pretty.
1.5 / 5 BLOBS
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