Heart-wrenching, this powerful story of a family's surviving the 2004 tsunami in Thailand is so good one can hardly look away (except for some bloody images which my readers know I block from my field of vision). The movie was made in Spain (hence the Spanish title above), where "the producers" (I don't know which of the seven) heard a radio show about the true story and decided to make the movie. Survivor María Belón (shown here with Naomi Watts) gets a story credit. Her family is Spanish and lived in Japan when they vacationed in Thailand for Christmas 2004. In the movie we are to assume they are British, as Watts (last blogged in J. Edgar), Ewan McGregor (most recently in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), and the wonderful boys playing their children, Tom Holland (his first time in front of a camera but he had starred and co-starred in a couple of London productions of Billy Elliot), Samuel Joslin (in his debut he shows strength in his one important scene), and Oaklee Pendergast (can't be more than 6 but was in a 2008 episode of the British comedy series EastEnders and is in something coming out later in 2013) all speak English with UK accents. Watts was nominated for an Oscar, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice (she lost the latter two to Anne Hathaway from Les Misérables), among others, for this role and young Holland, although he lost the Best Young Actor/Actress Critics Choice award to Quvenzhané Wallis from Beasts of the Southern Wild, won an award from the National Board of Review for his role of eldest son Lucas. Jack said to me during the movie, "That kid ought to win something!" Note: the "old woman" watching the stars is Geraldine Chaplin, 68 year old daughter of Charlie Chaplin and Oona O'Neill Chaplin, herself the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. In the movie Chaplin (1992) she played her grandmother Hannah Chaplin.
Director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchéz were much awarded for their first feature The Orphanage (El orfanato - 2007), and will doubtless get more work in the future. One line from the trailer that has stayed with me is Watts saying to Holland, "Go help people. You're good at it." So sweet. The special effects are spectacular yet believable. May cause motion picture motion sickness so sit in the back if you are susceptible.
Fernando Velázquez' (scored The Orphanage and many others unknown to me) music is appropriately scary or sad--listen to this preview. Do see this before the Oscars.
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