Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006)

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This was an awful load of old rubbish. Most of the acting was painful to watch, the characters unbelievable and unsympathetic with the possible exception of the British Consul or whatever he was. Were we supposed to feel sympathy for Mrs Peabody and her awful droning on and on about her son's leg. He lost a leg, 300,000 people lost their lives!!! and she wanted a medevac arranged just for him !!! I kept watching until the end to see if the story ran true to what I would have expected from this calibre of programme, and the 6 year old British girl be miraculously found. OK, it didn't run true to form!. I would also hope that the person who played Ellen Webb now realises she has no future in acting. Shame on the BBC for being a party to this rubbish. And shame on me for watching it until the end.

This acceptable dramatization to the horrific Tsunami tragedy of late 2004, under-examined still in the States with mind boggling statistics recalling something out of a biblical nightmare, does a fine job at capturing many different perspectives witnessing and withering to global catastrophe, however protracted and misaligned the dignified project can be. In reliable HBO fashion, the made for TV film barely feels like it, boasting arresting production, reliable performances, and a well rounded script. What does misfire though, is a prolonged detailing of these painful aftereffects, even worse when split up on two separate DVD's while only clocking in just over 3 hours. In keeping with the original miniseries, a bland DVD transfer only illustrates an awkwardly resolute second part over the first part's initial effectiveness.Starting with the brief but frighteningly executed Tsunami itself, the film proceeds to detail 4-5 different characters amidst the chaos for it's remaining 3 hours, utilizing plenty of research to intertwine a few fairly developed narratives of varied and conflicting natures to disturbing effect. The result at times feels necessary though in time merely competent. Although a wide array of perspective lends to a sensitive portrayal of so much horrific fallout for all those involved with this unprecedented event, any initial universal appeal the soulful disaster piece warrants became overshadowed by the disappointingly connected subplots insistence to overstay their welcome (and become more Babel then needed). The fact also remains that despite Thailand being represented in the film, the principal characters are a Western filter to understanding this tragedy that is assumed to be more engaging to your typical American television surfer. Anyone who would not feel insulted at it's slightly sensational leanings then should feel enlightened by a detailed, multifaceted chronicle that should remain the definitive movie on the event.It does feel stretched out (getting the first disc is satisfying enough, though would definitely leave a few cliffhangers), but for the haunting location set design alone, Tsunami: The Aftermath will help take comfortable, middle-class citizens into the heart of physical and emotional loss with a click of their remote.

It is television after all so I kept waiting for the good news. Where was it? Certainly in this story of massive human suffering there has to be some good news. Okay... I'll give the producer/director/writer some leeway in that they wanted to tell a story about the Tsunami for a western audience so that probably accounts for the seemingly bizarre absence of any Thai person of note in the movie with the exception of hard working kitchen staff boy. Thank god for the western NGO worker to help those poor villagers who had fled to the hills . . . and then the Brits who came to the aid of the villagers. I am living in Thailand now and find that the Thai are quite capable (despite a bizarre bloodless coup of a freely elected Prime Minister to restore democracy?) of doing some really good things.. and doing quite a bit for themselves. There was an attempt to show the difference in response to this disaster on the part of the Thai (why it was o.k. for them to burn bodies w/o identification). But.. please.. where was the good news in this movie?

The problem with making a film about a well-known disaster is that the obvious line of dramatic development is precluded precisely because everyone knows it before the film starts. In 'Titanic', James Cameron spun a tale about the spirit of the age, which he bound up with the famous event at the heart of the film; but 'Tsumami: the Aftermath' tries no such tricks, and sells us a straightforward catalogue of human misery and suffering. It's all very earnest, and unclear what the point is supposed to be. Countless survivors (with missing relatives) are shown responding with a mixture of dignity and disbelief in reality. This may be one response to tragedy, but it's not the only one, and in this film appears to be celebrated as the highest expression of the human condition: epitomised when one man stands up at a public meeting and is applauded for his heartfelt but impossible demand that his (dead) child is returned to him. Liekwise, the film stresses a view that those on the scene in a non-personal capacity needed to emotionally empathise with the feelings of the suffering, whereas one could argue that, when it comes to the rationing of limited resources, one actually needs officials who can be completely dispassionate, and who can turn down the heart-rending (and conventionally justified) demands of those who cry loudest to meet instead the needs of those with even greater need. Finally, there is a political sub-plot, but this is presented more as a means to the redemption of a cynical journalist (who, as you might have guessed, learns to care) than as an end in itself.The review may sound pretty cynical in itself, and I don't want to belittle the appalling human suffering of the real life tragedy in any way. But this film's obsession with dignified emoting puts a very strange spin on the human condition.