While Trying to Recreate the Horror of 2004, Bayona Manages to Do 'The Impossible'!

Rating: 9/10 (21 April 2016)

A married doctor couple, Maria (Watts) and Henry (McGregor), has brought their three young boys on a much-needed vacation to the coast of the Indian Ocean. In a scenic resort, the brood fit in for a gorgeous afternoon poolside with nary a Christmas tree in sight and their holiday plans prepared for a beautiful vacation. That day, however, was not to be the one they had hoped for.
A mere fifteen minutes into the film, a slight breeze catches Maria's hair, quickly turning into a whipping gust of wind. It's one thing to hear stories of tsunamis and the spontaneity with which they appear, but it's another thing to see it happen in front of you. No warning. The ground rumbles, vacationers scatter and scream, their world about to be turned upside down, forever. From complete relaxation to impending death. No warning.Separated by rushing water and dangerous terrain, Maria and their eldest son Lucas (Holland) travel as best they can on her severely wounded leg towards civilization and hopefully help. The first half of the film focuses on this pair as if Henry and their other two children were swept into the sea like so many others. Henry, however, is still alive and his chapter begins at the halfway point when he tries to seek Maria and Lucas out. From then on, it becomes about the apparently insurmountable logistics involved in getting this family back together.
Technically impeccable, 'The Impossible' gives the brutal caprice of nature its due, never romanticizing it or demonizing it. It begins as a steady radio dial, suddenly and violently spun into fits of static and garbled chaos. Director Juan Antonio Bayona conducts this symphony with a steady hand and a wonderful visual eye. He spins the focus in on a single family caught up in the disaster, personalizing the horror and bringing it home in unashamedly melodramatic fashion on its very own tidal wave of emotion. While doing so, Bayona creates one of the most traumatizing and realistic disaster sequences in history. Avoiding the temptation to fill his piece with dramatic underscore that swells as our protagonists are tumbled in the muddy waters of the invading ocean, Bayona removes all musical accompaniment for this portion permitting loudness and utter silence to fill our senses along with visual stimuli that will leave you scarcely able to breathe. This swift wrath of nature is expertly realized, but the heart of the film is in its characters and how they respond to the betrayal of the world around them.
Naomi Watts, in her career best performance, expresses the rooted emotions of a mother both physically and emotionally, filling the film with so much fearlessness and unshakable motivation, that she enraptures the audience with her survival instincts. Ewan McGregor provides able support as the distressed father and is extremely competent. Tom Holland delivers one of the strongest juvenile debuts seen in years, conveying a complex series of emotions with natural serenity.
The Impossible separates itself from the other disaster films by focusing not just on the scale of the mayhem, but the intimacy of the struggle. Yes it takes us back to an epic nightmare that was the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, but the flashback is vertiginous and horrible and oddly poetic.