The Impossible: “90% of what you see on screen is true”

JA Bayona’s film returns this evening on Chérie 25.

At the beginning of January, the Spanish director will retrace in The Snow Circle the dramatic survival of a Uruguayan rugby team crushed in the Andes. A true story that occurred in 1972. A little over ten years ago, the latter already signed a shocking and realistic film, The Impossible. A success to watch again this evening on television.

In 2012, First had met Juan Antonio Bayona to talk about the creation of this drama strongly influenced by the cinema of Steven Spielberg. We are republishing the interview, as well as that ofEwan McGregoron the occasion of the rebroadcast of the film.

The Impossible tells a true story, but to what extent have you dramatized it?
Juan Antonio Bayona : 90% of what you see on screen is true. We changed a few elements to give the story a universal scope. We never specify the nationality of the characters (in reality they were Spanish, editor’s note). I didn’t choose the story, it chose me. Every time I told it, I was very moved. For what ? One of the answers is in the title. We called him The Impossible because most of what happens seems impossible. There is something beyond simple facts. It’s about what happens when you have to face the end. It is this universal dimension that dictated us to make the few necessary changes.

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You use familiar cinema devices, such as suspense: we don’t know if the survivors will find the other members of their family. But have you ever wondered to what extent you could use these tricks to manipulate the public?
I wanted the audience to feel the experience of those three days of tsunami. Not just being there, but living there. Hence the choice to adopt the point of view of a survivor, to show how hard it is to live. Indeed, I had to ask myself the question of the limit that should not be exceeded. And on two occasions I consulted survivors to ask them if the representation I was proposing was correct. One such moment comes when the children are reunited again. I asked the real children to describe this moment to me. The real Lucas told me: “it was the happiest moment of my life”. If you are trying to share this moment with spectators, you will use all the means at your disposal. We never amplified the characters’ actions. They do nothing that determines whether they will be saved or not. This was a very important point: if they had, it would have implied that those who didn’t survive hadn’t done enough. And writing the screenplay was very difficult because of that: how to tell the story when these characters do nothing to find each other?

The scenes of destruction shot in the studio are spectacular. How did you know if they would work?
There were two kinds of challenges on this film. The first was emotional, we talked about it. The second was technical. From the beginning, we eliminated the CGI for water effects. That’s not realistic. We had to absolutely avoid any artifice that would take the viewer out of the reality of the story. Hence the choice to use real water. It took us a year to prepare this sequence, and even during filming we weren’t sure of the results. Looking back, I’m very proud of what we did. The idea was to make the viewer think that it was impossible for the other characters to survive. So it had to be very primal, very brutal, but above all very real.

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The description of the experience of Naomi Watts is particularly brutal. Has no one advised you to show a little less?
I repeat, we were very close to reality. I remember receiving letters from survivors every day before arriving on set and those letters were extremely detailed. It helped everyone a lot. So it’s sometimes hard to watch, but we see how humans are capable of giving the best in the worst situations. It’s not just about surviving, but knowing why, for whom, and what price you are willing to pay. There is a very beautiful moment where the mother tells her son that she is going to put her life in danger to save someone he doesn’t even know.

How did you manage the children?
As they are not actors, it was necessary to mix fiction and reality as often as possible. Ewan McGregor And Naomi Watts helped a lot in this sense by building a solid bond with them. I insisted that the children were not ready at the time of the first take. They must not have known what they were going to see or do. There is a beautiful moment with little Daniel who begins to take care of Maria and stroke her hair in the tree. It was a real moment, and I always watch for these accidents that aren’t in the script.

Juan Antonio Bayona, director of The Impossible: “I feel close to Spielberg”

Did Guillermo del Toro help you, as he did on The orphanage ?
He was always very encouraging, but only as a friend, not as a producer. I sent him emails, photos from the set, I showed him a rough cut of the film, and he kept telling me: “I would pay not to make this film, given its level of difficulty.” We had to deal with the worst effects imaginable, those with water, without forgetting the children. We did a lot of things we shouldn’t have done. Like shooting on film. But we did it.

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Here is the trailer for The Impossible :