The Impossible

J. A. Bayona’s 2012 film follows a family torn apart by the 2004 tsunami. María Belón, her husband Enrique Álvarez and their three sons were really at the Orchid Beach Resort in Khao Lak that morning. Belón worked with screenwriter Sergio G. Sánchez, sent him letters about her time in hospital, and picked Naomi Watts to play her after 21 Grams. On screen they are renamed Bennett and no nationality is stated, which is what the whitewashing criticism targets. Filming used the real resort and Takua Pa Hospital. The wave was built physically: Magicon in Munich made the bungalows at one third scale, only three and a half of them, the rest multiplied in the composite, and the water was shot in the tank at Ciudad de la Luz in Alicante. A channel fed by thirty five pumps carried the actors through the surge. Watts and Tom Holland, fourteen at the time, spent about five weeks in it. It was Holland’s first feature; Watts got a best actress Oscar nomination. A good fit if it matters that the disaster is real water and miniatures rather than a computer, and you will sit through a second half of corridors and name lists. Not for you if you expect the film to call the family Spanish; nationality is never spoken.