The Impossible (2012)
This deeply unsettling depiction of the experience of a family caught up in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami is directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, and stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor as Maria and Henry Bennett (based on Maria Belon and Enrique Alvarez) – parents of three sons.
As the film opens, we find the family of five has arrived for a Christmas holiday at the newly opened Orchid Beach Resort at Khao Lak in Thailand. As they enjoy the festivities at the resort, Boxing Day dawns, and the area is devastated by a massive, violent tsunami. The family is separated. Maria and eldest son Lucas find themselves in one place, with Maria having suffered extensive, serious injuries. Henry and the two younger sons, Thomas and Simon, find themselves somewhere else, with Henry suffering mostly superficial wounds.
Both groups set out in search of help, and each other. Maria and Lucas find a lost child, but promptly lose track of him again once they are rescued by local residents and transported to a hospital. Henry sends his two sons away with another family who are travelling to the safety of higher ground, while he continues to search for Maria and Lucas. Maria has lost consciousness, is separated from Lucas in the hospital, and is then mistakenly identified as somebody else.
There follows a period of time when the family is close to finding each other amid the devastation and chaos, but circumstances conspire against them. Eventually, Henry is reunited – purely by chance – with all of his sons outside the hospital, and they search inside until Maria is found. It is only then that the real extent of her injuries is made clear, along with the excruciating detail of how they were sustained, via harrowing flashback.
To be clear, The Impossible is a difficult film to watch. The absolute power of the tsunami – in the face of which human life and connection is of little consequence – is utterly terrifying. But the determination of not only the members of the Bennett family, but also those that they encounter on their journey back to each other, is truly inspiring.
World Trade Center (2006)
This is the first of two films on this list that centre on one of the most infamous days in history – September 11th, 2001 – which saw America attacked, and ramifications soon ripple around the globe. Directed by Oliver Stone, World Trade Center approaches the depiction of the most devastating terrorist attack on the United States Of America from an intimate angle – by telling the true story of Port Authority Police Officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, who were two of just 20 people to be pulled alive from the rubble of the destroyed buildings.
With a plane having struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) assembles a team of Port Authority Officers to attend the site and assist in any evacuation. The group is made up of himself, Will Jimeno (Michael Pena), Dominick Pezzulo (Jay Hernandez), Antonio Rodrigues (Armando Riesco) and Christopher Amoroso (Jon Bernthal). On arrival, they take in the extent of the disaster, and head into the concourse of the North Tower, passing large numbers of injured people receiving first aid. As they confer on best action, a loud rumble alerts McLoughlin to a building collapse, and he instructs his group to get into a nearby elevator shaft.
Rodrigues and Amoroso do not reach the shaft in time, and are lost. Pezzulo, Jimeno and McLoughlin survive. Pezzulo realises he has enough movement to try to free Jimeno, who is pinned by the legs, but McLoughlin is buried deeper. When the North Tower collapses, further debris hits the men and Pezzulo is crushed. In his last moments, he fires his weapon in an attempt to attract the attention of rescuers. McLoughlin and Jimeno try to keep each other alive for many hours, and are eventually found by U.S Marines Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) and Jason Thomas (William Mapother – although Oliver Stone later apologised for casting a white actor, having discovered too late that the real Thomas is black).
While any depiction of the events of 9/11 will inevitably be disturbing, World Trade Center is especially powerful due to its dramatisation of what actually happened inside the buildings when they collapsed. With the vast majority of people having watched the events unfold on live news broadcasts, or from the city streets outside, it is the moments during which McLoughlin and his team pick their way through the injured in the tower foyer, before hearing the rumble of approaching debris that are utterly gut-wrenching.
But, this devastating reality is, to an extent, tempered by the heroism that brought these first responders into the stricken building, led them as team-mates to the elevator shaft, and made their rescuers determined to save them – in spite of the danger to their own lives amid the rubble.
