The Impossible (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2012)

[Brian C]

J.A. Bayona's The Impossible truly does for the 2004 Asian tsunami what critics of Schindler's List claim that film does for the Holocaust - trivialize it as a human uplift story. A Martian who watched the Bayona could come out of the screening with an honest belief that the disaster primarily affected Western tourists; area natives are given almost no part in the story and the sheer scale of human loss is simply not acknowledged. I'm a little wary of being an overliberal scold about this kind of thing, but the film is really ridiculous on this score and just plain tacky.

Even aside from that, though, it's not really much of a film. It's well shot and the effects work is more solid than most, but it's clumsily edited (and sometimes acted) and the score is overbearing to the point of distraction. And curiously, despite being based on real people, the plot feels awfully contrived, as if the writers needed first to find reasons to keep the family apart and then subsequently struggled to find a way to bring them back together.

[tarpilot]

Whenever I read the title of that movie my mind goes straight to Mountain High

[colinr0380]

Have you seen Vinyan, Brian C? That film, while again focusing on the plight of a privileged Western couple and the search for a child, might provide an interesting corrective/balance to The Impossible.

There's a fascinating use of contrivance to get the main plot going - the wife at a swanky fundraising party sees what she thinks is her child lost in the tsunami in a brief, fuzzy, long shot of an activist video being screened and then becomes determined to track him down by travelling under cover from Thailand into Burma and the 'heart of darkness' of the country.

It is not quite as good as Don't Look Now, but it traffics in surprisingly similar 'foreigner abroad' territory (and features some interesting pre-cognitive images that seem to be attributed to the husband, which perhaps is a nod to the earlier film) - it is really Fabrice du Welz's version of the Roeg film as much as Calvaire could be considered as his version of The Wicker Man. Vinyan also has some really eerie 'dream' sequences and a fantastic final shot that really encapsulates the entire delusional voyage:

Spoiler

The wife gets what (we think) she wants and is surrounded by children grooming and taking care of her. Yet it also works as a crazy naked woman being surrounded by vicious kids taking advantage of her insanity to take the opportunity to grope her!

[Roger Ryan]

I was annoyed that the trailer for THE IMPOSSIBLE synopsizes the entire story...or, at least, appears to. My hope was that everything presented in the trailer was in the first 20 minutes of the film and then we'd be treated to another 90 minutes of the family at home being torn apart by depression, post-traumatic shock and survivor's guilt!

[Brian C]

No, haven't seen Vinyan - honestly hadn't heard of it until just now.

Also, I'd say that the trailer for The Impossible is a very accurate representation of the actual film. It does omit Geraldine Chaplin's appearance as the requisite wise old person, who meets one of the children in the family just long enough to present an analogy that seems downright offensive if applied literally to the events of the film. Maybe I misunderstood, but I think she actually waxes rhapsodically about the "beautiful mystery" of not knowing who died and who lived in the tsunami.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Spoiler

There were several dramatic manipulations in the film that I found particularly offensive. The first issue came with the idea that McGregor would send two children of ages 7 and 5 out on their own during a mass tragedy, unsure of their location and in the hands of total strangers. It was a cheap manipulation to tear the family apart yet again and, though I can't speak as a parent, I can't imagine how a father so readily abandoning his children in such a traumatic moment for a needle-in-a-haystack search that the film abandons within minutes anyway. The second scenario is the eldest son Lucas being separated from his mother in the hospital while the entire nursing staff and volunteers play what in real life would seem like cruel tricks (the explanation-free display of his mother's personal items) to torture the boy and build up unease in the audience.

[knives]

Spoiler

There were several dramatic manipulations in the film that I found particularly offensive. The first issue came with the idea that McGregor would send two children of ages 7 and 5 out on their own during a mass tragedy, unsure of their location and in the hands of total strangers. It was a cheap manipulation to tear the family apart yet again and, though I can't speak as a parent, I can't imagine how a father so readily abandoning his children in such a traumatic moment for a needle-in-a-haystack search that the film abandons within minutes anyway. The second scenario is the eldest son Lucas being separated from his mother in the hospital while the entire nursing staff and volunteers play what in real life would seem like cruel tricks (the explanation-free display of his mother's personal items) to torture the boy and build up unease in the audience.

Since the film is based on a true story however loosely shouldn't you check to see if the parents actually did that?

[Professor Wagstaff]

I did search for information on those scenes and read interview material with the mother Maria Belon, but could find nothing to say that they actually happened (if anyone's read something contrary to my take, I'd be happy to know that). Personally, it plays with an air of dramatization, something Brian also suggested, with his citation of the awkward Geraldine Chaplin cameo as another false moment in the film.

And curiously, despite being based on real people, the plot feels awfully contrived, as if the writers needed first to find reasons to keep the family apart and then subsequently struggled to find a way to bring them back together.

Facts are often not enough for anyone writing historically-based stories to excuse their handling of the material. Everything might be true and perhaps screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez and director J. A. Bayona simply failed to convincingly shape those scenes into something believable.

[rs98762001]

It really is a terrible film. Shrill, repetitive, exploitative, ham-fisted, rife with cliches. I mildly enjoyed The Orphanage so this felt like a glaring step back from Bayona. The comparison to Schindler's List is way off the mark but it does seem Spielberg-influenced in all the wrong ways- the Spielberg of latter years, who doesn't trust the audience for itself, choosing instead to signpost and highlight every morsel of easy, lazy emotion.

[tachyonEvan]

Upon seeing the trailer, I was enraged that this was about white people, and then I recognized that there was no need for me to ever see this movie.

[colinr0380]

So far I'm mostly reminded of that BBC/HBO co-production from 2006 - Tsunami: The Aftermath. I found even that multiple stranded mini-series a bit problematic so I'm worried about how narrowing the focus down onto just one story (to presumably stand for all) will pan out.

[rohmerin]

Bayona is not tall at all but He has become grande (big). He has just won the Goya for best director and He has given as gift the Goya statuette to the real survivor (Naomi Watts in the film).

Could you imagine Julia Roberts doing the same to the real Erin Brockovich ?