Cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom HollandDirector: Juan Antonio Bayona Runtime: 113 min. Verdict: As a document of real events, it is passable. As a caseof a left boob, it has my attention. Genre: Drama, Action (?), Thriller (?)
There’s athin line between representing historical events and depicting historicalevents, and while the former can be a catalyst for ideas and discussions, thecut-and-dried this-is-what-it-was-like nature of the latter is more liable tocause serious ethical issues. Especially when the filmmaker happens to be sosure of his genre-credentials and his showmanship so as to go ahead and try andimpress us, which then kind of derails the entire enterprise. Mr. Bayona, whoseThe Orphanage is a fine horror filmwith the sort of haunted ending I tend to seek, throws close-ups on the peoplehere (real and humanistic), and master establishing shots (spectacle) for thedisaster to cause the exact kind of awkward combo that makes the “depiction” ofhistory the slippery ground it is, and TheImpossible some kind of a sequel to ZeroDark Thirty. So yeah, The Impossibleis mediocrity of the mildly offensive kind. Not that I’m offended, but I’m curiouswhy Mr. Bayona so consciously makes an attempt to chart the tsunami of Dec 26th2004 via the eyes of Caucasians. The locals are there but only to fill thefringes. Not that I would want to pretend to be sensitive either way, but justthe nature of the intention would be some kind of interesting. Especially when disaster-meterMr. Emmerich has updated his oeuvre to include a global annihilation in 2012. What has grabbed myattention though is the strong undercurrent of the Oedipal that runs throughoutthe picture, and were it for me, it would have been called The Curious Case of the Left Boob. It is better to put forthbullet-pointed evidence lest somebody find me - the messenger - a little perverselyinclined. Just like this innocent gentleman here. · The film opens to Maria Bennett(Ms. Watts) sitting not close to her husband Henry (Mr. McGregor) so as todisplay a traditional picture of a family, but a seat apart. Their conversationsare not archetypal lovey-dovey couple but archetypal caught-in-the-rigors oflife a-little-distant husband-wife. · She gets up and sits next toher eldest son Tom (Mr. Holland), and their interactions are considerably morepersonal. The camera felt a little tighter on the close-up too. The son happensto be a teenager. · While Maria is dressing up fortheir evening on the island, we catch the briefest glimpse of her left boob. Godknows why. Or maybe Freud knows. · Before the big flood thehusband and wife have another of their disconnected conversations. Especiallyabout her career. · After the big flood the motherand son are left together. A lot of melodrama causes their union amidst theflowing waters, and while they walking ashore, we once again catch a glimpse ofher left boob. Through the son’s vantage point. Awkward. He turns his eyes awaywhile she ties her cloth all the time looking at him. Connection there I tellyou. · They meet a little kid whotheir rescue. The mother is one wanting to rescue the kid, while the son ismore intent on finding safer grounds. More on this thread later. · They climb onto a tree, and asshe sleeps, the son steals a little glance and the camera pans on to her…..guess…..coveredleft boob. · The cutaway from the son searching for his mother in thehospital is juxtaposed with the father, who we see for the first time since thebig flood. It is a proper case of replacement via editing. · The father leaves his two sonsin the hands of a friend so that he could try and find his eldest son Henry andwife. It is a gamble. And who discovers those two little kids? Henry. · They all finally find eachother in the end, and the mother is to be operated upon. While she is takenaway for surgery, the father sits against the wall with the other two kidswhile the son is seated against the bed his mother was lying on. I expectedthem to all be together, all the kids under the umbrella of the father,especially after having shared such an ultra-melodramatic reunion. The powerequation is not so neat and tidy, and it gets even foggier when the son gets upand lies down on that very bed in that very place his mother was there not solong before. Mr. Bayona causes overhead perpendicular shots that kind of uniteboth the mother on the surgical bed and the son on her mother’s bed. It is hewho imagines/remembers/fantasizes/dreams about his mother in the big tsunami andthe big wave hitting her. · We’re in the end, on the flightto Singapore, and she’s on a bed. Before the flight attendants ask everyone tobe seated, the husband and wife hug and kiss in a rather impersonal far-mediumshot, and as he goes back to his seat on the left aisle, he nods at his son,sitting on the right aisle to share whatever he has to with his mother. · The son walks up, and this iswhen we get a proper warm composition of the mother. She smiles upon looking athim. The warm closure we usually get the end of such disaster movies betweenloved ones that reinforce traditional familial dynamics (like for instance theglance shared between Laura Dern and Sam Neill at the end of Jurassic Park on the helicopter) isshared between the mother and the son. He talks about the kid they saved (who, it can be construed,was given a new life by them and is thus their kid) and she starts crying. Thatlittle life-form was theirs.
I’ve no idea what all of this amounts to. I might ask for thetruth and Mr. Bayona might very well claim I can’t handle the truth. Or viceversa. The thing is, when I first saw the left boob I thought it was HenryBennett’s possession. I am not sure of that anymore.
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