Ewan McGregor in The Impossible, photo courtesy Warner Bros. and Summit Entertainment
The Impossible (2012)
This movie, which takes place in Thailand during and immediately after the devastating 2004 tsunami there, isn’t so much a father-child story as it is a mother-son narrative: When the tsunami hits, Maria Bennett (Naomi Watts) and oldest son Lucas (Tom Holland) are swept away from their hotel and the rest of the family, and the film focuses largely on their efforts to survive and, if possible, reunite.
But one of the most memorable scenes for me focuses on father Henry Bennett (Ewan McGregor), huddled with some other survivors. He, too, was ripped away from the rest of his family. Though he somehow finds his two youngest boys, he has no clue where his wife and Lucas are.
“I will find them,” he says on the phone. “I promise you that.”
The scene feels so visceral to me. It’s so easy to slip into Henry’s shoes—to understand how he breaks when the reality of his loss crashes in on him. The hopelessness of trying to find his wife and child in a disaster so massive. And yet, he does what I think fathers have to do. They recover. They move on. “I will find them,” he says.
Fatherhood, after all, isn’t about everything always going well or right. Disasters happen. Hopefully they’re not of our own making, but sometimes, quite frankly, they are. And the only thing we can do is try to find our way forward in the midst of it. We’re given a new chance every day to make things better—to love our kids and help them the best as we can. And maybe, some days, we’ll get it exactly right.