The Impossible

Do yourself a favor. If you haven’t seen The Impossible, by all means do so! This film, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, may be one of the most emotionally powerful films I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s based on a true story. 

The premise is simple: a family – husband, wife, three sons – travel to Khao Lak, Thailand  for a family vacation.  Maria Bennet (Watts) is an English physician who no longer practices because she’s raising three sons. She and her  Scottish husband, Henry (McGregor) and their sons – Lucas, Tomas and Simon- stay at a resort in Khao Lak, Thailand over the Christmas holidays in 2004.

They arrive on Christmas Eve day and we get a sense of them as a family. Lucas is the rebellious older son who bullies Tomas, nearly 8, the middle brother. He’s interested in astronomy. Simon, the youngest, is a cutie, an innocent. Maria and Henry appear to have a good marriage, beset by uncertainties – he may be losing his job.

On the morning of December 26, a tsunami slams into the coast, decimating the resort, and sweeping away Maria and Lucas, the oldest son. At the moment the tsunami hits, Henry and the other two sons are in the resort swimming pool.

Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter  begins with a 2004 tsunami scene. But compared to The Impossible, Hereafter’s opening is like afternoon tea. As our daughter remarked while we were watching the movie, the opening of Hereafter is just for effect; in The Impossible, the tsunami and its aftermath are the story.

Without giving away too much, this story is about how human beings react and persevere in the midst of a natural catastrophe so devastating that nearly a quarter of a million people were killed. By focusing on one family, the emotional resonance is powerful, utterly genuine. Maria is severely injured, and she and Lucas end up in a makeshift Thai hospital, where the conditions are so gross, so unsanitary, that at certain points I writhed.

Maria keeps asking Lucas about the color of her severely injured leg.

“Red, “ he says. “Red. Why?”

“Red is good. Black is not good.”

Henry, meanwhile, has found his two youngest sons and sends them into the mountains with other refugees, so that he can stay behind on the coast and search for his wife and Lucas. This decision seemed like a plot flaw to me, but as Rob pointed out, maybe it actually happened, Henry only wanted his sons somewhere safe. In a situation like this, where a natural catastrophe has ripped apart normal, it’s difficult to know what decisions you might make. What’s immediately obvious about all the survivors are shell shocked, profoundly traumatized.  

There are moments in this film that show humanity at its worst – like when Henry asks a fellow survivor if he can use his cell phone to call his father-in-law and the man says the battery is low and he’s waiting for a call, so no. 

And there are moments when we see humanity at its best and most heroic. Henry and other survivors are sitting around a campfire somewhere, sharing their experiences about the loss of spouses, children, the sudden, unpredictable horror that slammed into their lives. Henry starts telling what he experienced and breaks down, sobbing, and one of the fellow survivors hands him his nearly depleted cell phone. “Make the call,” he says.

Naomi Watts was nominated for best actress for this film, and with good reason. In her scenes, I never had the sense that I was watching a movie. She’s totally genuine, a character in whom you vest your emotions as a mother, parent,  wife,  physician, human being. Through her and Lucas, we witness the chaos in the aftermath,  how the injured flooded rural hospitals unequipped for such massive devastation. Through her, a physician, you feel the horror of her situation, how the deck is stacked against her.

I was surprised at some of the comments about this movie. But the one that really struck me was how this movie showed an insensitivity to the massive loss of loss of native people. I disagree. By focusing on the emotional chaos and horror that a family of tourists experienced, we are led into the heart of the disaster itself and its wrenching, emotional  aftermath. In the end, the message of this film is clear: love pushes us into the unexplored, the unimagined, and can bring about miracles.