Review of The Impossible (2012) by Nick O — 29 Jan 2014

REWATCH: I was listening to Marc Maron's WTF interview with Harry Dean Stanton the other day and when asked what the best thing is a director could do, Stanton replied it's to leave the actors alone, which I think is an incredibly fascinating tip. When I think of great actors or actresses, I think of those who bring their A game to every movie, big or small, and take their craft so seriously they're willing to collaborate while also do their own thing in bringing a character to life, or at least making his or her journey interesting.

Naomi Watts has to at least be in the top five greatest screen performers alive today. What I love most about the movies she picks is that in addition to delivering drop-the-mic pantheon depictions for established auteurs like David Lynch, Woody Allen and Peter Jackson, she'll also take risks in working with rising indie stars like Laurie Collyer ("Sunlight Jr."), Anne Fontaine ("Adore"), Rodrigo García ("Mother and Child") and "The Impossible's" J.A. Bayona.

This is one of her most physical roles to date, braving it all in a way -- like Sky Ferreira on her recent record cover -- that isn't supposed to turn you on. She plays the matriarch of a family consisting of her husband (a fine, fierce Ewan McGregor) and three boys (an astounding Tom Holland as the oldest) that's pushed to the limit when swept up in the 2004 Thailand tsunami. It's a punishing portrayal: authentic, alive, and awe-inspiring. I can't imagine anyone else but Watts in the part.

It's nice to watch this movie a year or so apart from the (also white) people who thought they were doing other races a favor by incessantly bitching that Bayona and writer Sergio G. Sánchez gave a serious foreign crisis a Caucasian face. Which, yeah, that complaint still pisses me off. It isn't a filmmaker's job to have an agenda, it's to tell a story. Sure, the script might not be as up to snuff as the resonance of the images. But "The Impossible", even in a post-"Gravity" world, still works as a mighty fine piece of achingly pretty visual poetry.

And Spanish maestro Fernando Velázquez -- an oft Guillermo del Toro associate who also came together with Bayona on 2007's del Toro-produced "The Orphanage" -- provides one of the most emotionally wrenching film scores I've heard in a while (used to pretty much the opposite effect of Hans Zimmer's for "12 Years a Slave", flourishing whenever something goes right for the characters as opposed to the inverse.) If only all disaster movies gave you such a feeling of separation instead of cool disconnect. (79/100).