OVP: The Impossible (2012)

Film: The Impossible (2012)
Stars: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Geraldine Chaplin
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Naomi Watts)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There are some movies that feel short because they're, well, short.  Others feel that way because they fly by.  And then there are those that feel short because you're constantly peaking from behind your hands, as you wince and force yourself to view something that clearly happens in real life, and is a tragedy.  The Impossible is one of those films.  By the time you've ended it, if you aren't desperately rethinking either your stance on federal aid or your future travel plans to Bangkok, you missed too much and need to go back and grin-and-bear-it.

The film tells the tale of a family of five, on a vacation in Thailand, right in time for the cataclysmic 2004 tsunami that ravaged Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa.  I hadn't peaked ahead, and so I will throw out a SPOILER ALERT to ensure that no one who doesn't want to peak ahead doesn't accidentally do so, and so I had no idea who would live (or remain intact) throughout the film, though I imagined that a good chunk would make it (at the very least, the kids were living through this thing, as Hollywood doesn't make these sorts of films about dying children).

The family is split apart by the tsunami, with Watts and eldest son Lucas (Holland) stranded on the beach and McGregor and the two younger boys in relatively better shape than the injured Watts and the moody teenage swings in temperament that Lucas exhibits.  The film divides the chapters out rather neatly, as you are always left with a big question mark in the previous storyline, as if this would have worked better as a television series than a movie, as the structure of the film is quite solid, especially for a true story (biopics tend to be so formulaic and so "hit the big notes" that they lose a lot of those great cinematic moments in trying to awe by showing the familiar).

The family could easily have been anyone, and Watts and McGregor both take advantage of this fact and also sacrifice a bit in their "everyday-ness."  The performances have a relatability that instills a lot of great fear into anyone in the audience-these are people that live across the street from you, that work in your office, they look just like your own family, and they were put in this horrific, frightening situation, and so you spend much of the first half of the movie wondering the same questions the director wants you to-"what would I do in this situation?" "would I have stayed behind looking for my family when all hope seemed lost?" "And should I start swimming more at the gym?"

But in that relatability (I'm aware this is a made up word, but it's early in the morning, I've had a long week-just go with me here, you know what it means), you lose quite a bit of what makes the characters extraordinary.  Both Watts and McGregor spend so much time trying to make their characters normal, it takes away from the extraordinary things they are accomplishing-a wall of water the size of a house just swept you and your three children over an entire hotel, and you all five survived-that's not something normal people do, or experience, and I wish that they had sacrificed some of the ways that you can identify with the characters with a bit more character development.

I will say that, while physically insane, the Watts performance in particular (and I love Naomi Watts-King Kong and The Painted Veil and Mulholland Drive-yahoo!), seemed more about the makeup and the physical endurance than about the actual woman behind all of this bravado.  I don't feel like I knew Maria in the same way that you get to know the three boys.  Where was the great scene involving Maria that we got with Geraldine Chaplin (P.S. Between this and Django, I am love, love, loving the classic star cameos that are coming out in my January-theater outings)?  I feel like I admired this woman that Naomi was playing, and that I was impressed by her, but in the end, I don't feel like I got to know her, and I think that causes the film to lack and somewhat fail, even when the tears were easy for the director to mine from the audience.

What about you?  I'm almost done with all of this year's acting nominations (both Wallis and Riva will be seen today), so expect reviews of the final two Best Actresses later today.  And speaking of Best Actress-any thoughts on who will or should win?