In works of art, happy families are rare. Although they may be loving, dysfunction rules. The one at the center of The Impossible (2012), which I viewed last night courtesy of Netflix, is an exception. The film is based on real-life experience. For me, that tag has always been irrelevant. My main concern is not with whether the facts have been captured accurately. I care about story. Is it entertaining? Moving? Illuminating? In this case, according to a review at IMDb, the subjects were changed from Spanish to lily white, odd given that the film-makers were Spanish. I suppose it was done in deference to box office. It didn’t help. It was a failure commercially. Does the change diminish the story? No, but it does make it fictional. Of course, viewing disaster as entertainment is always problematic, especially when the event actually occurred. I’ve never been able to warm up to scripted Holocaust cinema. I was even uncomfortable watching Titanic (1997) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), despite their technical brilliance. They are so real I felt like a sort of voyeur. The Impossible skirts this by focusing almost entirely on one family for the first half of the film. The viewer does not get to know and like the other families, many of whom meet an unlucky and unjust fate, the second of the work‘s themes. Survivors of such events can’t help but wonder why them and not me? Another theme is the moral obligation to the suffering, even if it may place one in jeopardy. As expected these days, the special effects are marvelous. Surprisingly, they aren’t CGI, as the budget was too modest to cover such expenses. A segment in the special features showed the crew building a miniature model of the resort, and how the faux tsunami waters were delivered to devastate it. They had one take to get it right, and they nailed it. Ewan MacGregor and Naomi Watts bring their consider gifts to the role of the parents. The three boys, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast, are wonderful. It was directed J.A. Bayona, who also did the spooky Spanish language The Orphanage (2007). On a scale of five, four. It is rated 7.6 of ten at IMDb. I got misty a few times, especially at the undeserved deaths and suffering of the survivors. The only entities as merciless as nature are terrorists and serial killers.
My thanks to yougov surveys, where I earned a $100 gift card, with which I ordered seven copies of Close to the Edge. I’ll eventually turn a small profit on each, after the royalty payment. And I still have funds left to put toward Saturday morning’s groceries.
Sometimes smart leads to lucky. For the first three-and-a-half hours of today's session of the floating book shop, business was slow, which was not unexpected given the Jewish holiday and the fact that most of my regulars had already made purchases this week. I stayed a half hour longer than usual, hoping Crazy Joe, for whom I had put a book on ice, would show. He did and wound up buying three non-fiction hardcovers and overpaying for them by two-thirds. One of the books was by Dominick Dunne, which led him into revealing his belief that O.J. is innocent, that his son is the murderer, and that the evidence is overwhelming. Nothing he said was implausible. Visitors were in a garrulous mood this day. Mountain Man went into a half-hour rant about politicians. "They should all be assassinated." And Captain Spaulding went on for about 15 minutes on B.S. in general. I thank them for helping me pass the time, and I thank Joe and the other buyers for making it a third straight successful day.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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