Warning:
Naughty language and description of gore, kids.
Notes:
Finally
another multi-part review. I took my time with this one because this movie is
dear to me. But it doesn’t say much considering the usual state of these
reviews. Oh well. As soon as I found it online, I watched it and wrote about
it. I usually take forever when I choose a movie to review. Not this time.
Enjoy, bitches.
__________________________________________________________________
Music:
7/10 waves
If
you haven’t seen this movie, stop reading this and watch it. I don’t care how,
just watch it. This movie is one of my all-time favorites. I won’t listen to excuses, just watch it. If
you don’t know what it’s about, well guess what, it tells you in the first
minute of the movie.
Here
are some hints: Thailand, 2004, tsunami.
This
movie is about a family that lives through the disaster. After the opening
credits, we are greeted with a black screen. All to be heard are rumbling
noises and it gets louder and louder and your heart rate goes up a little bit
waiting for the tsunami to- just kidding it’s a plane. Ewan McGregor plays
Henry, who worried about whether or not the alarm was set at home. Naomi Watts
plays his wife, Maria, who tells him not to worry. They have three boys: Lucas,
Thomas, and Simon. The family is headed
to Thailand for the holidays.
Thailand is very
beautiful, and I was almost jealous until I remember what movie I was watching.
They get a lovely room with a seaside view on the first floor even though they booked
a room on the third floor. It was the hotel’s fault. A little background is
given on the family: they live in Japan for Henry’s job, Maria is a doctor,
though no longer a practicing one, she now acts as a stay-at-home mom. Lucas
wants a soda he found in the mini fridge but Maria says no. Lucas is obviously
getting into his teenage, my parents are annoying, angsty years.
The island is alive with tourists and families ready to spend their holidays in an exotic
setting. Everyone is having a good time. Their first day is full of fun, food,
and floating lanterns. The sequence is wonderful and sad. As an audience, we
know how bad everything is going to get.
The
next morning is Christmas morning. Maria and Henry film the kids waking up and
opening their presents. One of the boys, I think it’s Simon, gets a red
kickball and they all play with it on the beach. Their Christmas day is spent diving
and enjoying being together as a family. Even the ocean was pretty and serene;
like the calm before the storm. At least
the family had a good Christmas.
The
next day is the day. You can just tell as the scene opens. Everyone is out by
the pool; it seems like most of the hotel residents are actually. Henry is
worried about getting fired from his job, something very trivial in light of
what is about to happen. But how can he know. Ever the comforter, Maria says
she will go back to work if she has to. It feels terrible listening to them
plan for the future. I wanted to scream at the television and tell them to get
out of there.
Henry
gets out of his little funk and goes to plays kickball with the boys. Maria is
reading when one of her pages gets blow away. She retrieves it and is kneeling
in front of a glass panel when the power goes out. The wind picks up even more
and the rumbling starts. My entire body was tense because this is the whole
reason people watch the movie, to get a closer look at what that day was like. The
pool goes quiet and everyone looks toward the beach as palm trees get knocked
over and the rumbling gets louder. No one had a clue this was coming.
The wave crashes through
the hotel, washing it away. People start screaming a running. Maria yells for
Henry, who is with Thomas and Simon in the pool. He manages to grab ahold of
both of them before the water overtakes them. Lucas jumps into the pool just as
the wave reaches him. Maria braces herself, and as the water hits her, the
screen goes dark. The few seconds dark are silent. I was even holding my breath.
Flashes
of dirty water take up the screen. It’s swirling and crashing as the camera surfaces
to find Maria clinging onto a palm tree. She’s cut up and screaming. An overhead
view shows the audience the extent of the destruction. Everything is gone. You
can’t even hear her screams over the roar of the water. Miraculously, Maria hears Lucas scream. He is
being washed away with the current, and away from her. Maria, the badass mom
she is, lets go of the tree to get to him. She gets impaled by a branch along
the way. It’s very cringe-worthy.
This
is the second most frustrating scene of the movie because you want them to get
to each other, but fighting a tsunami is difficult. Luca is able to grab onto debris but Maria
can’t, so he lets go. They both mange to grab hold of a mattress, on opposite
sides of course, and reach to hold hands; but just as they are about to, the
mattress hits a pole and flips. Back in the water again; it’s really
frustrating.
A
car floats by Lucas with no one in it except a crying baby. I had a moment of:
“what the fuck?” He watches the car float by and sees another wave coming from
the other direction. It drowns the car and Lucas gets pushed under. He spins
out of control with the debris and you cringe as you wait for him to get hurt
by something, which does happen. He gets knocked on the head with some metal.
He is able to surface and grab a hold of a pole.
Across the water, he sees his mom drifting
with the current, face down. Lucas screams for her and thankfully she stirs while
she gets stuck on some downed trees. They swim for each other and finally
manage to stay together. They hug it out and I will admit that I almost cried.
The agony of the sequence is over, just an entire movie to go (I think I might
be a masochist when it comes to these things).Mother and son are able to find a
tree to wait it out on.
When
the water goes down enough, the pair goes off to find higher ground. We see
just how badly Maria is hurt when Lucas sees the back of her leg. It’s flayed, like
almost completely. The skin is hanging below the open wound. Lucas stops to
tell her, but when she turns around, Lucas does as well. Maria’s shirt is torn
and her breast, along with the wound from the branch, is exposed. She fixes her
shirt as best she can and has Lucas walk in front of her.
Along the way, Maria bandages up her leg with
leaves and twine. She also coughs up blood, which she hides from Lucas. They
find a nice tree off in the distance and make for it. Before they get there,
however, they hear a call for help. Lucas doesn’t want to help but Maria tries
to convince him by pulling the: “What if it was your brothers?” I thought that
would convince him but instead he yells that Simon and Thomas are dead. That
just punched me in the gut. Thanks for reminding me, kid. Maria is still able
to convince Lucas to go look for the person. They find a little cute kid stuck
under some debris. His name is Daniel, and he becomes an honorary family member
by getting to go with them to the tree. Lucas finds a can of soda from the hotel and puts
it in his pocket. He then helps Daniel and his mom up the tree. Boy, Maria is
in really bad shape. The three hang out in the tree and share the soda until
some local people find them.
Note:
Every destruction shot is heart breaking. This shit actually happened. People
died and people lived. The music really adds to it as well. It’s not the most
unique soundtrack ever, but it was used beautifully to add emotion to every
important moment.
An
elderly man drags Maris through the muck because he isn’t strong enough to
carry her. Her screams are hard to listen to. They end up at an unscathed home
and get cleaned up. She’s so thankful and
starts crying for her boys (this is a music moment). Men put her into the back
of a truck on an old door to drive her and Lucas to the hospital. They are
leaving as they realize Daniel isn’t with them. We don’t know what happened to
Daniel. It’s sad. So are the dead and
injured people they see on the way.
The
hospital is poorly equipped for such devastation. It’s crowded as shit. Maria ends
up in a closet because they don’t have enough rooms. A doctor comes and tends to her injuries,
painfully, and not very thoroughly. She is then moved to a crowded recovery
room. Maria asks Lucas if her leg is red. It is and that’s a good sign. She’s a
doctor, remember. The pair shares a tangerine while Maria tries making
conversation with the woman next to her. But she isn’t talking.
Instead the lady starts coughing up blood.
Maria tries to help but then she does the same thing except she pulls a nasty
string of blood clots from her throat. Way to outdo her, Maria. It’s gross, but
necessary to show how bad people were having it. Lucas obviously freaks out,
telling her to stop and looks away from the gore, something I’m sure a lot of
audience members did.
A
while later, a man comes through the room, yelling for Francesca, I think he
said Francesca. Maria knows how busy everyone is and tells Lucas to go help
people. He agrees after some convincing that Maria isn’t going anywhere. While
he tries to find something to do, a man pulls him aside to ask if he’s seen his
kid so Lucas goes on a mission to find him.
Along
the way he gathers more names from people looking for loved ones. He walks
around the hospital calling out for people. The music grows steadily louder the
longer Lucas looks for people. Then it stops when he yells out the first name
and a boy answers. He runs to go get him and it’s finally a good moment as
father and son are reunited. Lucas is excited, hell, even I was excited. He
runs back to tell his mom but when he gets there, she’s gone.
He
panics and a nurse comes up to him, saying she will help. It’s not the help he
wanted though. He ends up in a lost children tent. The nurse asks him a bunch
of questions that he struggles to answer due to the shock. She gives him a
name tag and leaves. Lucas cries when he sees the other kids with name tags and realizes
that he might be an orphan. This is the third most frustrating moment of the
movie.
The
movie goes back to the resort. What are we doing here? A person is walking
through the mud. They find a red ball and pick it up. The person turns around
and, surprise, it’s Henry. He’s alive, a determined to find Maria and Lucas. He
keeps looking for them until sunset. Then he treks back to the hotel and we see
there were many survivors. Who does Henry meet at the hotel? Simon and Thomas. The
entire family survived. This movie is called The Impossible for a reason.
TBC..
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