The Impossible

The tsunami that struck the coast of south-east Asia on Sunday, 26 December, 2004, remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Commonly known as the Boxing Day Tsunami, it emerged from the Indian Ocean like a ferocious sea monster, birthed into existence by a megathrust underwater earthquake and growing to towering heights of up to 30 metres. In its destructive path, 230,000 were killed, thousands of homes were destroyed and the lives of thousands of families were changed forever. “The Impossible” tells the real-life story of one of those families.

It is not the first film to reconstruct the tsunami; Clint Eastwood’s supernatural drama “Hereafter" opened with a startling special effects sequence depicting its attack on the coast of Thailand. In Eastwood’s film, we were presented with a god’s eye view of the waves’ destruction before we were plunged inside the water along with a key character. In “The Impossible," there are no glorified money shots: we are immediately swallowed up by the waves, spinning and thrashing inside the waters, dragged along by the current and overwhelmed by the suddenness and the confusion of the situation. In this sequence and in the scenes set among the resulting wreckage, “The Impossible” is an astonishing triumph of physical filmmaking.

It is also an inspiring showcase of the triumph of the human spirit. Yes, “The Impossible” is one of those movies. Its focus is on the Belon family, headed by Henry (Ewan McGregor, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”) and Maria (Naomi Watts, “Fair Game”), who were vacationing at a holiday resort in Thailand when the tsunami hit. A controversy surrounding the film is that the real-life Belons have been changed from a Spanish family to a British family, and that the film’s perspective is from well-off tourists rather than the many locals rendered homeless by the catastrophe. Perhaps we will see their tale unfold on the silver screen one day (though “The Impossible” fully acknowledges the tsunami’s impact on other, less privileged victims), but for now what’s important is that the Belons’ miraculous story has been told and that it has been told with the utmost of sincerity and publicity.

In the opening scene, we are introduced to Henry, Maria and their three young sons (Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast) as they are rattled by turbulence on their flight to the luxurious beachside Khao Lak resort, where they tear open their presents on Christmas Day and launch Chinese lanterns into the night sky. There’s a definite foreboding in these early moments, particularly in a POV shot of the vast, open sea as it watches over the land it will soon destroy, but never is it overplayed, left instead to quietly gnaw at the back of our minds. As the family relax and enjoy themselves by the hotel swimming pool, an approaching rumble causes them to sense a shift in the atmosphere, as confirmed when an enormous tidal wave comes crashing towards them from behind and above the hotel.

The 10-minute scene depicting the tsunami’s attack is more terrifying than anything I’ve seen in any disaster movie. From its devastating force, palm trees are torn from their roots, vehicles hurtle down streets and homes explode into scatters of drifting debris. Bystanders are scooped up and swept away like matchsticks, breathlessly reaching out for safety and drowning in the unstoppable waves. All of this is accomplished with savage viscerality and breathtaking technical skill, but what makes this sequence so terrifying is the all-important human element: one of the film’s most harrowing images comes when Maria clings desperately to a tree, screaming wildly in terror. Another comes when she reaches out for the hand of her eldest son, the tips of their fingers just managing to graze one another.

We’re frightened because we care for these people, and it is for this very reason that we stick by them for every second that follows the tsunami’s strike. Images of the aftermath will be all too familiar for those who watched footage on the news and on YouTube: a shattered, post-apocalyptic landscape of mounted wreckage and bloodied strangers, it is stunningly recreated in real-world locations. I won’t give anything away of the Belons’ journey (though the title is itself a spoiler) other than in saying they were split in two, with Maria on one side of the land and Henry on the other (Henry looked after the two younger boys while eldest boy Lucas assigned himself as his mother’s loyal protector).

At the heart of “The Impossible” are two brave performances. Every burst of emotion from Watts is irrefutably, devastatingly authentic as she plays a woman taken to the edge and then pushed beyond it. For reasons I won’t reveal, she spends much of the film’s second half bedridden and weakening as time goes by, humbled by the determination of Lucas and never stripped of her maternal instincts. Alongside her, McGregor gives perhaps the finest performance of his career as a husband and father searching through the wreckage for his wife and son. In a phone call home, his character is faced with articulating the situation he and his family are in and, suddenly hit with the horror of it all, falls to pieces in front of our eyes. As this moment plays out, I defy any viewer not to feel a lump in their throat.

Director Juan Antonio Bayona previously directed the excellent Spanish ghost story “The Orphanage,” in which he displayed an eye for gifted child actors. He has discovered three more in Holland, Joslin and Pendergast, who, despite their youth, display the same haunted look of realisation inhabited by their much more experienced adult co-stars. Holland, in particular, is a remarkable find, inspiring as he embarks on a self-imposed mission to reunite lost family members scattered throughout a makeshift hospital. He reminded me of Christian Bale in “Empire of the Sun” with his unblinking confidence and the maturity that grows in his eyes. In this 16-year-old Brit, we may have a new star.

The Belons’ journey from the tsunami onwards unfolds under a thick layer of melodrama, and many viewers will no doubt find certain plot contrivances (based in reality they may well be) rather manipulative. Tug at the heart strings it certainly does, but it’s a skilled tugger: there are moments in “The Impossible" capable of making a grown man cry. And while Sergio G. Sánchez’s script has its deficiencies — count the number of times a character’s name is bellowed mournfully in the second half — “The Impossible” is a riveting drama of raw emotion with a blunt force as powerful and surging as any tsunami.

8/10