THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY (THE IMPOSSIBLE)

Last Sunday, I fully intended to go to see 'Lincoln' or 'Les Miserables'.

But such is the popularity of those Oscar nominated movies right now that both screenings were sold out in the Omniplex in Lisburn.

Not wanting to waste my journey, I plumped instead for 'The Impossible' - a film which I had hoped to see in recent weeks but had become resigned to catching on DVD because of competing demands on my time.

Based on the real life experiences of Dr Maria Belon Alvarez and her family, this Spanish-made docudrama deals with the horrific events of 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in the Indian Ocean which devastated parts of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and many other nations.

Juan Antonio Bayona, it's Catalan director, came to international attention five years ago with his remarkable horror movie 'The Orphanage' about a woman who is flummoxed when her adopted son vanishes.

Bayona taps into similar separation anxieties in his latest film which turns the incredible true story of a Spanish family initially separated by the Tsunami and eventually reunited into a story about well off Brits caught up in those horrific events.

Like all great docudramas, Bayona's movie begins almost matter of fact as we watch Naomi Watts' Dr Maria Bennett and her husband, Henry, played by Ewan McGregor, trying to keep their three boys in check on a flight to Thailand from Japan.

Bayona and his cast quickly establish a bond between their characters and the audience through a series of believable, very ordinary holiday scenes. 

We watch the family arriving in their beach resort and dealing with an initial cock-up around their booking, having a memorable evening meal which climaxes in the lighting of gorgeous Chinese lanterns and then celebrating Christmas Day.

All is calm. All is bright until Bayona brilliantly ratchets up the tension on Boxing Day.

The family laze around the swimming pool, with Maria chiding her husband for checking emails and texts from work on his Blackberry while he frets about the security of his job.

A ripple of wind blows a page from the book Maria is reading onto a glass partition while Henry plays with his sons in the swimming pool.

Then a flock of squawking birds flies overhead as Maria tries to retrieve the page and the guests in the beach resort stand frozen to the spot, wondering what the hell is going on.

Hell is well and truly unleashed when the Tsunami hits the resort, with the residents frantically darting for cover from the huge wall of water.

It is in these sequences where Bayona, his cast and crew really score.

We follow Watts' Maria as she initially struggles for her life underwater, only to emerge from the flood desperately clinging to a tree stump.

In the chaos and the panic, we see her surly 16 year old eldest boy Lucas, played by Tom Holland, gliding hopelessly by and she immediately lets go in a bid to rescue and be with him.

Bayona, his cinematographer Oscar Faura, film editor Elena Ruiz, the visual effects team and especially the sound effects team, led by Marc Bech, recreate what it must have been like to be caught up in the madness of the Tsunami by stretching their technical capabilities to the limit.

This is film storytelling at its most visceral.  

In fact, it is the most powerful piece of narrative filmmaking since Janusz Kaminski's cinematography, Frank E Eulner's sound effects and Michael Kahn's editing of the Normandy landings sequence in Steven Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan'.

And like Spielberg's movie, the effect on the audience is gruelling.

Maria and Lucas survive and we follow them as they stagger through the devastated landscape - her left leg torn badly and losing a lot of blood - until they get to a hospital.

Later, we learn Henry and the two younger sons, Tomas, played by Samuel Joslin, and Simon, played by Oskar Pendergast, have also survived and are holed up in the devastated beach resort.

As Maria struggles with significant blood loss in the chaos of the hospital, Henry risks life and limb to search for her and his eldest boy and along the way encounters other desperate fathers and mothers.

Naomi Watts turns in a powerful central performance as Maria and is thoroughly deserving of the Academy Award Best Actress nomination she received.

It is a gutsy physical and emotionally charged performance that deserves to take its place alongside Emanuelle Riva's in 'Amour'.

But you have to wonder why this the sole Oscar nomination for the film?

With the exception of 'The Life of Pi', has there been a drama over the past 12 months which fully exploits the potential of sight and sound like Bayona's movie?

Bayona should justifiably feel robbed of Best Motion Picture and Best Director's nods.

But Ewan McGregor should also feel miffed about missing out on a nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category in what is one of the most heartfelt performances of his career.

Indeed, the movie should have picked up a slew of technical nominations for Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and possibly, Best Visual Effects.

Sergio Sanchez also should have laid claim to a Best Original Screenplay nomination.

And with all the fuss over nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis's Best Actress nomination for 'Beasts of the Southern Wild', it is Tom Holland's performance as Lukas in this movie that you really feel was cruelly overlooked by the Academy.

Holland's performance is really about the end of innocence as a surly, selfish teenager, not quite on the cusp of adulthood, is thrust into an horrific situation and has to grow up very quickly by taking responsibility for his badly injured mother.

His face believably registers all the confusion, panic and helplessness a teenager catapulted into that situation would feel and he convincingly handles Lukas's transformation into a responsible young man.

Released around the same time as 'The Hobbit', Bayona's movie has done well to hang in there at the UK and Irish box office and has performed respectably in cinemas.

But this steely movie deserves to hang in there for a little longer.

It isn't an easy watch and some people will want to come armed with hankies but it is a film which renews your faith in cinema.

It would be a shame to consign 'The Impossible', as I almost did, to the DVD player.

(This review originally appeared on the Eamon Mallie.com website in January 2013)