Warning: Article not the usual level of 'funny'!
The Impossible is an 'epic' film based on a horrific real life natural disaster that occurred just over eight years ago. An earthquake in the Indian Ocean thrust a tsunami inland killing over 200,000 human beings who had lives, family and friends. The Impossible, eight years later and with a massive budget, reinacts these events from one family's perspective - for our entertainment. Movie-goers pay good money, sit in a dark room for nearly two hours and watch actors run about pretending to be in a life-changing, unimaginably grim scenario that is the sort of thing that usually 'only ever happens in the movies'. They then leave the cinema tweeting about much they 'cried', perhaps forgetting that they'd probably have cried a lot more had they or a loved one really been there. What is the message The Impossible and films like it are trying to portray, and how much time should pass between the disaster and the movie based on it? Generally, is this cinematic trend doing everyone involved more harm than good?
Really, it's all about finding the difference, or the balance, between the complicated intricacy of producing a movie to educate an audience, showing just how difficult a horrible moment really was for everyone involved, and dramatising a true tragedy for entertainment value to generate big bucks, all while the genuine terror of said 'horrible moment' is still fresh in the memories of those who suffered as a
result of it. Were the folks who put together The Impossible simply showing us what happened and leaving it up to us to react, or was it relentlessly pulling at our heartstrings, showing us suffering in such a way that they were hoping we'd cry so much we'd tell all our friends about how much it made us all cry? Then of course there's the flipside. If you're trying to truthfully recreate an event as tragic as a tsunami that wiped out over 200,000 people, there's going to be an awful lot of emotion in the mix - naturally.
So, there's a war going on and millions of people are dying. It is the 'war on terror'. Zero Dark Thirty approaches this in a very 'matter of fact way', with its main target being the hunt for and death of Osama bin Laden. The film is almost completely void of any emotion and everything in it is presented 'as is'. What's the goal? To educate? If so, it does a marvellous job at teaching us what processes must be gone through to capture or kill a wanted man. But, the constant difficulties and emotional trauma faced by living in a war-torn country where people's beliefs are so extreme they consider it a requirement to take as many lives as possible is largely ignored. The explosions are there and the deaths are all present, controversial or otherwise, but The Impossible's tear-jerking piano music isn't. We are presented with what we've been led to believe are the hard facts, and it is intense, nail biting stuff that doesn't waste a second exploring the motivation of the 'opposition'. It'd be a surprise if afterwards you're not left wondering how the US can justify storming into another country and killing a man, rather than arresting him and giving him a fair trial. Is that not an act of war? If the tables were turned and somebody important to us was shot on our soil, and those responsible made a movie about it (with a cracking soundtrack), would we not be outraged? Would we not want to retaliate?
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Ultimately, a movie depicting something awful and real is generally more acceptable when it's exhibiting the bravery of team players and unsung heroes, like in United 93, but not so okay
when it is glorifying the deaths of innocent people - and dangerous people - for entertainment value, or just because we 'won'. Gun slinging video games constantly fall foul to this notion. However, is there an unspecific amount of time that can pass after a horrific incident that suddenly means everyone's alright with tranforming it into a smash hit blockbuster? For example, Titanic is heart breakingly sad and shows what happened when a huge ship filled with unsuspecting holiday makers collided with an enormous iceburg, and now that it happened more than 100 years ago it's pretty much acceptable to watch and enjoy - no questions asked. Barely five years after the World Trade Centre was brought to the ground, the film 'World Trade Centre' was released, starring bleedin' Nicolas Cage. If The Impossible was too soon, that certainly was.
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Back to where we started - The Impossible is, indeed, quite beautiful. It really stands out best when it tackles the finer details of such a large-scale natural catastrophe, such as when Maria (Naome Watts) tries to thank the natives who help her when she's injured, even though they can't understand what she's saying. Still, she feels the need to thank them, repeatedly, verbally, but their desire to help her is purely out of the kindness of their own hearts. Then again, to say all 114 minutes of it is 'beautiful' seems somewhat twisted. It's not beautiful at all - it's horrific, it's bleak, it's upsetting and depressing. And to rate it four or five stars seems insensitive - and unhealthy. People died, people suffered and they are still suffering. Are we all watching and rating movies like The Impossible and Zero Dark Thirty forgetting that they're based on true events, or are we glad that they've been created, no matter how vivid, shocking or controversial, so that noone can ever forget the real people who lost their lives?
Roo