A beautiful film with universal appeal

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2013)

I responded to someone who thought this movie had racist overtones. I thought it was a beautiful film with superb direction and acting.
I just saw the movie. First of all, the medium of this illustration is film. Producers and and other involved in this kind of art have to consider the mode and the way characters are able to portray the story, not just the material. I suppose the most accurate method for delivering the story would have been to have the original family star in the film. Race certainly wouldn't have been a factor in this case, would it?
When viewing art, yes you consider the artist and where he came from, his own personal story. But how far do you take this idea that 'race' should be as much a part of this story as the family and what happened to them? Should the director also be of this 'race'? Should they all meditate around the ideas that race might play? Remember, film is a form of art. One with limitations, such as time. And art also has certain rules. In film, like a ballet, you're dealing with a medium that uses time in a very different way than traditional art. Time is depicted, not in a linear fashion, but as a moment in and of itself. A ballet isn't made up of each formal move and the stories of the dancers themselves. Movement in this way is meant to capture all of these pieces as interpretive experience which can say something quite true in 2 hours about something that took a lifetime to construct: the struggle between grace and nature for example. Art in this way moves our soul, not our logic or our understanding of the progression of things in the 'real' world.
I'm sure casting is a tough job, but Naomi Watts and Ewan McGreggor both have incredible resumes and were very qualified to play these roles. These are creative decisions, not social ones. There was no 'social' argument here. A Japanese family could have played these roles just as well if the actors were decided to embrace and commit the direction of this creative work. Yes it was a true story, and because of that the creative process demands certain considerations. But as far as critiquing western culture, your argument lacks premise. The family the film was based on is Spanish. And if my geography is correct, Spain IS a western country.
Culturally speaking, like every country in Europe, they have their own way of life yes, but they're still largely western in their thinking, their play, their political ideology. But once again, this film isn't about 'Spanish" culture. It's about a family. Yes they were Spanish, but as such a family they have their own familial nuances and particular way of life that I'm sure is different enough from other families in Spain to make them personal. Did it matter that the actors in the film didn't speak Spanish? They were on vacation. They played soccer. Celebrated Christmas. Played ping pong. Drank soda. And they enjoyed the amenities provided for people who are accustomed to western culture. So the fact that the cultural experience of the family in the film seemed to be British (Ewan McGregor's character was obviously Scottish) isn't in any way a distraction from what actually happened to the Belon family. I agree casting for Lucas might have yielded better results, but the outcome of the experience portrayed is unchanged.
So the premise that this film somehow falls short of a narrative accurately depicting some 'racial' truth about Maria and Henry Belon and their children is just completely absurd. The film is a narrative about deep suffering, courage, love, ... a family's desperate struggle to find each other. The husbands undying devotion to his wife. The wife's bleeding heart to help others in need. To demonstrate that character for her son. To overcome her own internal fears. And somewhat about how they perceived this new devastated world they found themselves in. How to relate to others. How to cross a language barrier. How to let strangers take care of them. These ideas in fact aren't 'western' at all. They're Universal. If you can't see that, you should spend a little more time studying these disciplines, art, culture, psychology. Before you try to impose something as controversial as race into a conversation that obviously affected the readers in a very personal way. One of the gentleman who responded on the 'Boards' actually went THROUGH this disaster, like the Belon family.