I’m not sure my husband will let me pick movies to watch after I took him to see “The Impossible” this past week. I guess his idea of a good time doesn’t include watching people suffer for a couple hours after a catastrophic natural disaster hits such as the 2004 Southeast Asia tsunami. It killed over 230,000 people in 14 different countries. I, too, sort of wondered what I was doing there watching wrenching physical pain on the big screen.
But “The Impossible” is a powerful reminder of what happened and perhaps a strong testament to the human spirit of pulling together in times of terrible disaster. The film is amazingly realistic looking. One minute this family is on a delightful vacation at a resort on the coast of Thailand, using the pool area, the next minute a terrible sound pervades the hotel guests’ world, followed by a horrific wall of water that obliterates most everything in its path.
I still don’t know how any of them survived. The film’s an amazing true life story of a married couple and their three young sons. They seemed so close to the beach at the time, where people were just swept away and many never found. The recovery efforts after are quite heroic by the local people in the film, especially considering the magnitude and remoteness of where it happened. The family is torn apart and is left to search for one another, even though they assume the others are likely dead.
It’s a humbling and daunting film, huge in scope, reminding us of our fleeting and at times vulnerable existence on Earth and in the face of natural disasters. I can’t say you’d enjoy “The Impossible” or that it’s easy to watch, but you’d likely take away something about the human spirit from it. To see a photo of the real Spanish family’s it’s about and to read their story click here.
It looks as if it was beautifully shot, too. I saw a couple of trailers.