Can't Help it but Felt Inadequate

Rating: 5/10 (17 May 2013)

Based on the fact that the actual family behind the movie was a huge supporter throughout the whole shooting process, and the fact that they actually went back to the original locations in Thailand to shoot the movie, I think the director and his team tried hard to make it as realistic as possible. The CGI was quite well-crafted.
Maria Belon herself already said the movie is accurate Maria Belon (the real mother) in an interview responded to a question on what she thinks the movie will mean to people. She said it is not about that it was a story on another person, but it is a story that people can connect with even though they had not seen a tsunami. She stressed that it is part of a struggle of life, that everyone can recognize and relate to.
Sadly, I do not think that this movie did enough to accomplish the things she said. Even after all the scenes of being trapped in the water and the sense of not knowing whether your loved ones survived, I still felt empty from the movie. There are scenes where it would have made more sense to conserve energy but the main leads wasted them with unnecessary melodrama. Dialogues were limited, understandably because people at times do not know or do not want to say anything under that level of trauma...but the director could have allocated more scenes/ more body language/ involve more people at the correct times, to make up for the disconnect.
I do not believe Naomi Watts did a good job portraying Maria Belon. When I watched Maria's interview, my impression that she was a strong woman and the type that would put rationality above emotions. She was not afraid to re-watch the movie on sufferings that she herself endured, but she felt pain when she watch the sufferings OTHERS endured. I do not understand why Naomi, who have had many conversations with Maria, failed to recognize Maria's strong personality but instead portrayed her crying too often (not when she was crying in physical pain but there were many scenes where she was crying for the sake of crying). Of course I knew she was aware at that time of the things she may have lost and that she was in between life and death. But her eldest son was with her all the time and common sense would say she was needed to be strong! Naomi did a wonderful job portraying a mother thinking about her children no doubt. But not a wonderful job portraying a woman strong at heart. Maria did said she nearly gave up at the end, but Naomi looked to me as already given up somewhere in the middle.