Stars: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor
What I Liked
Heavyweight performances from Watts and McGregor. Ultra-realistic depiction of the tsunami. Harrowing depiction of the tsunami, meticulously detailed and executed. Great mother and son chemistry between Tom Holland and Watts.
What I Disliked
Harrowing narration with tiny emotional rewards. The needless insistence that the film is based on a true story. Forced casting of Watts and McGregor, remaking the story to be about a British family instead of Spanish.
Gist
It's an emotionally taxing film with great investment from its cast and its director, but as the emotional dividends pay off, you feel a little too drained to realize the payouts.
Maria and Henry Bennett (Watts and McGregor, Maria and Enrique Belon in real life--Spanish) with their kids Lucas, Thomas, and Simon decide to spend Christmas vacation in Thailand. While on vacation, the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 hit, separating the family and greatly injuring Maria. The film chronicles in great detail their survival of the tsunami as well as their eventual (and seemingly magical) reunion.
In 2004, a devastating tsunami hits Thailand and other countries in the Indian Ocean, claiming thousands of lives. The Impossible details the accounts of the Belon family, masked as the Bennetts, as they survive the tsunami and piece their family together through happenstance and good fortune.
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| The Belon family with Watts and McGregor |
Bayona developed the movie with intensive participation from Maria Belon (who is credited in the movie, "Story By Maria Belon") to keep things as real as possible. Watts was cast as Maria Bennett, with Belon saying that she loved Watts in Inarritu's 21 Grams. To remedy this casting problem (instead of actually turning Watts to look Spanish), they simply made everyone British. The Belons became The Bennetts Enrique Belon was renamed Henry, while their sons Lucas and Simon kept their names (or the spellings at least as Spanish names are accented differently), while Tomas was Anglicized to Thomas. Oddly, Maria was not chastised into becoming Mary, perhaps because Maria wanted to keep her name out of vanity, but whatever.
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| Maria Belon with son Lucas Belon at the premiere of The Impossible, 8 years after the tragedy in Thailand |
As with most true stories, we can count on directors to take dramatic liberties. Moviemaking has so many factors--how the producers and financial backers think it should sell, how the actors want to treat their characters, how the screenplay writers want to create cinematic affectation--that the final product may bear little resemblance to real life events--and sometimes for the better. In real life, Maria Belon loses half of her right leg, while in the movie, Maria keeps it (at least until the film ends) amidst becoming death.
My problem with The Impossible is how it managed to echo a fraction of The Passion of The Christ for Maria Bennett. It was a practice of stressful coincidences--owing perhaps to how graphic (and real, possibly even accurate) Bayona chose to portray the tsunami incident, with its fortunate events bordering soap opera territories that seems diluted in all that tsunami water. Was it bad? Far from it, but it is stressful to watch--it actually felt like experiencing the tsunami first hand that I'd say it is a movie experience that would mark on you and assure your distancing from the beach for the foreseeable future. Had Maria Bennett lost her leg, it would have been the nail to the coffin and cinemas might flood with tears--causing mass casualties. At least the family reunites and The Bennetts survive. Happiness! But for some reason, this joyful coincidence just couldn't compensate for the amount of stress I harbored over the 105 minutes running time. Of course, we wouldn't know for sure how much of all these is real, except that it felt real
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| Bayona depicts a tsunami event so graphically real, it's scarring. |
The direction was grueling and meticulously detailed and the acting was powerful, but I don't know, maybe it would have been wiser for them to have allowed more happy scenes--or at least let us in on what kept Maria Bennett going, or arrange the eventual reunion in a less soapy manner and eventually depict Maria losing her leg: yeah, we can handle it the way we did with How to Train Your Dragon though that one did have its enchanting and happy moments. It's an emotionally taxing film with great investment from its cast and its director, but as the emotional dividends pay off, you feel a little too drained to realize the payouts. Not something you'd love to watch on a lonely day.
Judgment: Probably it was a bad idea to watch it with an overcast mood and a penchant for heading the beach this summer. I may have been expecting for Bayona to Hollywood-ize this film a bit more, make it more jovial and celebrating, but it ended feeling like Hostel with water. But maybe if he had, I'd call it sappy and cheesy. So maybe it's all for the good. They could've really just made Naomi and Ewan look more Spanish though, I mean come on, how hard is that? 3.6 out of 5 stars
For this movie, I'm willing to pay, 170 to 190 pesos. I paid 191 pesos. And Eastwood Cinemas decided to show me a grainy version with Thai subs. What a rip-off, Megaworld!
I disagree with numerous aspects of this review. "Needless insistence" that the story was true? Had it not been true, it would have been just another ho-hum disaster flick. Substituting a Brit couple (with star power) for Spanish? BFD. Didn't bother Maria at all and was irrelevant to the story. The author can't seem to decide whether it would have been better for Maria to have lost her leg or not in the movie. I would have favored the former, but evidently that would not have been factual because it did not happen in the 48 hours the film depicts. Also the author calls the movie soap opera like at one point, but later says it was not sappy or cheesy. A pretty pathetic review.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, Steve581. I will try to answer much of your concerns without resorting to insulting you or the way you wrote your reply.
DeleteFirst, the phrase "true story" has been flashed several times on-screen. For me, I do not need to see this several times. Once is enough and I felt the director and producers were hammering that fact to the audience to assure everyone that this really happened. It's also on the trailers and on the posters. I think the audience is smart enough tbh to not need to be reminded that often.
Second, I said bordering soap opera, I didn't say "it was soap opera." Those two things are different. It didn't feel cheesy enough for me, but it almost did and still it was far from bad. Please also don't confuse soap opera = cheesy. Those are different things.
Third, there are many Spanish actors and actresses who would have fit the bill. I do not get the idea of the casting even if I immensely love Watts and Holland--until I found out that Belon hand-picked her. And yes, to me this is a BFD because it counters the "this is a true story" claim and gives further credence that the casting of known names, Watts aside, was to ensure investment returns. So yeah, it's BFD for me especially after the repeated claim of "true story."
Fourth, you are right, I cannot decide if it would have been good or not for for the film if Maria was to lose her leg during the duration of the film. While watching the movie, I didn't know that Belon ended up losing half of her leg, so it felt like a relief that she gets to keep it in the end. But while working on this review, I researched about how Belon is and found out that she lost half of her leg because of the tsunami. It was not stated when or how, but she did because of the tsunami. And the way that it was portrayed in the film seemed as if she will be keeping her leg because the operation ended up alright. When I found this out, it felt as if the producers, director, and writers of this film didn't have enough balls to portray a sad ending, but it could've been portrayed the way Dreamworks did with "How to Train Your Dragon." They could still make a sad ending, but still touch hearts is what I mean. I admit fault on this for not having stated how divided I am on this matter, however, and thanks for pointing that out.
Fifth, I don't think it's a pathetic review because I researched on this and worked on it. It has its faults, yes, but I guess the pageviews suggest otherwise, so thanks for your opinion and I hope you enjoyed the movie.
You say, "Watts and Holland portray believable mother and daughter." Shouldn't that be "mother and son?" I do think your review was very good. I heard an interview with Maria Belon and she stated that her leg wound was much more severe than was portrayed in the film, but that she did not want it to be shown as such because it was too horrific and she did not want the audience to focus on that. She said that was not the point she wanted emphasized. Nor was that what the film was about. She never said (during the interview that I heard), if her lower leg was amputated or if a portion of her thigh muscle was removed. As to the end of the film, where we see that she has both her legs, if this was so, it is possible that it was amputated later. In any case, for me the movie was about triumph through adversity and overwhelming odds, as well as what is really important in life - love.
ReplyDeleteThe review made sense. I agree. More importantly, your hot.
ReplyDeleteAwesome movie. Loved every bit of it.
ReplyDeleteHi, just finished watching The Impossible. I loved it ! I did get the impression in the movie she lost her leg of part of it because when Maria told Lucas to check her leg, it seemed obvious on his face it was turning black! And he fibbed so she wouldn't worry. I thought this was what he was referring to, when he told his Dad he needed to tell his Mom something. But on the plane he said he had seen Daniel again with his Dad. I think because they had been through so much grief (the audience too lol) that it was just implied that she knew he had fibbed, and why he had done it. At this point, they're just all so grateful to be alive and reunited that there was nothing else to discuss about it. Also I doubt I'll ever stay in a beach resort in Thailand. This movie was a tearjerker for me too. Great acting from all the actors even the children. Thanks for the review!
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