As an actress she gave greatly in Michael Haneke’s 2007 Funny Games and in 2009’s Mother and Child, but in the former her performance was limited by the film’s single key of sadism and few saw the latter. She’s always superlative, but The Impossible is Watts’ best performance in years. The Impossible is full of great special effects, and I’m enough of a natural disaster junkie that I’d have seen the movie just for them, but in the end what I’ll remember is Maria’s face, her cries and her determination.
Tsunamis are so unimaginable that the desire to see, to experience a Biblical wall of water for oneself, can run very deep (my own was the only reason to see Clint Eastwood’s off-key, Hereafter). The Impossible slapped some sense into my lust for disaster porn by enlightening me, from this safe but still palpable distance, on what it’s like to be keelhauled through populated areas. It left me shaken.
She should win Best Actress for the Academy Awards.
