Three Movies About the 2004 Tsunami

December 26, 2004 (20 years ago today) was one of the worst days in human history in terms of loss of life. Nearly a quarter of a million people were killed when a massive offshore earthquake in the Indian Ocean (9.3 on the Richter scale) set off a tsunami that rose as high as 100 feet in some spots, traveling far inland. The countries most effected were Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand, with lesser damage to places like Myanmar, the Maldives, the Horn of Africa, and Malaysia. It was the worst tsunami disaster in history, the deadliest natural disaster of the 21st century, the most powerful earthquake in the 21st century, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Asia, and the third most powerful earthquake ever recorded anywhere. The earthquake had the longest duration of faulting ever observed, amounting to ten minutes or more. It was underwater of course, but picture how terrifying it would be to FEEL a ten minute earthquake. I was in a mild one that lasted less than a minute and I wanted to hug the ground for dear life.

Earthquakes and tsunamis of this type are more commonly associated with the Pacific Ocean. Hence there was no early warning system in the countries affected. (That has since been remedied). This factor, and the dense populations of the areas hit, contributed to the large number of deaths. Most of these countries are popular tourist destinations, as well, meaning that people from all over the world were vacationing in the disaster zone at the time. Many were celebrating Christmas holiday.

I vividly recall being glued to cable news about the disaster for hours that day and for days afterward. It wasn’t simply because of the scale of the disaster, but more due to the fact that there was extensive footage of any disaster at all. It was unprecedented to see such a thing with your own eyes. It truly seemed unreal. Smartphones were not yet a thing, but by 2004, enough people had small portable video cameras that, for the first time, an event like this was recorded by dozens, hundreds, of people, from as many angles. This, coming on the heels of September 11, and one year prior to Hurricane Katrina — these portended a new world, a tsunami of its own kind. God forbid, should there be a similar event today, there would be hundreds of thousands of cameras pointed at it. With little real exaggeration, everyone is a film-maker today, or at least a videographer. Even so, each person is only equipped to tell his or her own story. Telling the WHOLE story is a job for professionals.

There are enough documentary and news specials about the tsunami to fill a warehouse, ranging from the terrific to the dreadful. A proper survey of them, at least by me, would be prohibitive. Yet there is a much more manageable number of narrative films that recreate the disaster, and that is what we focus on today. These three are the major ones that I know about.

Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006)

As the title implies, this VERY early cinematic telling by HBO and the BBC is mostly about the struggles of characters in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, although the tsunami is depicted in stock footage. Predictable charges of “too soon!” were made at the time, but the characters are all fictional, and most of it takes place after the water has receded. Further, it was shot on location in one of the affected areas (in Thailand), thus contributing to the local economy, it could be argued. Ordinally such rapid response made-for-tv efforts like this are dismissible as junk. This one is saved from that fate by a top notch cast that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo, Tim Roth, Hugh Bonneville, and Toni Collette. It was directed by the British-Indian Bharat Nalluri and written by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, Suffragette). For me, the script was probably the weakest element

Hereafter (2010)

Clint Eastwood’s tripartite meditation on life after death and communication with the departed opens on an extremely effective set-piece depicting the tsunami itself. Cécile de France plays a French journalist who happens to be in Thailand at the time of the disaster and gets swept away by the wave. The entire sequence is only 2 to 3 minutes long but it is impeccably designed, shot, and edited. One of the strengths of the sequence is that Eastwood compensates for an element of real documentary footage of the tsunami that may confuse some people. Due to the scale of the wave, on film it appears to be travelling slowly enough to be easily evaded. In reality, the wave is moving 20-30 miles an hour as it hits land, faster than any human being can run. The illusion of sluggishness is the same one that makes elephants seem slow moving (when in fact they can run about 25 miles an hour). Eastwood cheats the speed upward so the audience can experience the threat as the actual victims experienced it — as a monster that moved from the fringes of their sightlines to knocking them off their feet in a matter of a couple of minutes

The Impossible (2012)

This one too is set in Thailand, though with the justification that it is a true story. It is based on events that happened to Dr. María Belón and her family. Belón is a Spanish national, and though it was made in English, with an English-speaking cast, this is a Spanish movie. It is in fact, the highest grossing Spanish film of all time. Naomi Watts plays Belón in the film, Ewen Macgregor plays her husband, and a young Tom Hollander (age 12 at the time) plays the oldest of their three sons. This film combines elements of the other two. First it re-creates the disaster through a mix of CGI and model effects. Unlike the character in Hereafter, who is several blocks from the beach when the wave hits, the characters in this film are at a resort on the beach itself, giving them no time at all to escape. The five get scattered by the flood, and the bulk of the film is about the harrowing experience of trying to find each other (particularly upsetting since the two youngest boys are but five and seven years old, and at a certain point, they rescue a toddler who’s two or three years old and completely on his own). I won’t spoil the ending for you, but the title telegraphs it anyhow. If it weren’t a true story, film-makers would surely feel a need to have the conclusion be less miraculous. (As an added bonus, Geraldine Chaplin is in the film.)

Anyway, the elephant in the room here, to abuse a South Asian cultural reference, is that most of the stories told in these films concern European and American nationals. Major narrative films about the local communities affected by the disaster have not yet emerged, although this angle has been better covered by documentaries.

Earthquakes are not like climate change. You can’t say “never again” (frankly, you can’t say that about weather disasters, either). But you can be prepared, and when it happens to others, you can be charitable. And honestly, I’d rather root for the characters in movies like these, where it’s “Man Against Nature” than ones where people go around shooting and punching each other, any day of the week.