The Impossible

A mother will do anything for her children. Starting from little things, like exchanging sits with the eldest of her three children on the plane that is taking the family to spend a nice holiday in Khao Lak, Thailand, so that he will not argue with his younger brother. This happens a few seconds before the sound of the turbine breaks the tranquility of a blue and cloudless sky, as if it were a warning. The unthinkable can alter what we see in a blink.

We will share with them, Maria and Henry (the parents), Lucas, Thomas and Simon (the sons), the arrival of 2004 Christmas; we will see through the viewfinder of a video camera; the joy of the children when they find their gifts (a red ball, a telescope, a remote control car); we will hear the phrase used by Maria to get her sons to sleep, "think of something nice."

And suddenly, the next day at the hotel pool, the horror. The tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people in the Asian shores of the Indian Ocean falls on them and in a couple of minutes the family dissolves and paradise turns into the apocalypse.

Juan Antonio Bayona, who six years ago scared us with the story of a mother who had lost her son in “The Orphanage”, returns to tell another story of terror, this time real, of a family who refuses to lose itself.

The director spares no technical resource to do it, with shots that show the magnitude of the devastation and intentionally chaotic footage, which also puts us in the water with Maria struggling against the current, withstanding hits from branches and bodies and pieces of demolished buildings.

As director of “The Impossible”, Bayona proves to be a very reliable narrator, able to carry on his shoulders an ambitious project. Together with the writer they took the right decision to focus on the character of Maria, who makes us feel the courage of a mother who, even in the worst moments, teaches her child what is right, like when they help a toddler screaming in the distance, despite the wounds and the pain and the peril.

Tragedy is always the place where the best and worst of humans come out and it is underlined in the script at all times: if a tourist does not lend his phone to Henry, another one kindly offers it to him to make two calls  so as to  reassure his father in law. And Lucas would have not managed to get his mother to the hospital without the help of local people.

The Impossible, Bayona seems to say, is not the crushing blow given by the sea. It is the strength of the survivors, which is shown especially by Luke and Maria: this is the real surprise. For this reason, although it might resamble the end scene from a sports movie, the scene of Maria's hand coming out of the water moves us because it reminds us that in a world like ours, the will to live is in itself an achievement.

Director: Juan Antonio Bayona

Writers: Sergio G. Sánchez (screenplay), María Belón (story)

Stars: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland