Summary
Blake catches her breath before diving under. She comes up against a glass door. Ray swims to her. They surface in a few inches of shrinking space by the ceiling; they talk through the glass before diving back under. Upstairs, Ben and Ollie take cover as the building shakes more. Flood waters rise to their floor. Ollie asks if Blake is going to die.
When the water level is too high, Blake tells her father that she doesn’t think she can do this. She asks him to tell Emma that she loves her. They both sink down and Ray watches as she succumbs to drowning, dropping her flashlight. Ray swims around a corner, breaking his way into where Blake is. He pulls her out and swims up a floor to Ben and Ollie.
Ray performs CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) to resuscitate her and tells Ben to break a window. Emma hears Ben hitting a window with a piece of scaffold. She sees them inside and then drives the boat straight at the glass, smashing her way inside.
Ray continues to press on Blake’s chest as Emma pilots the boat out of the collapsing tower. Ben and Ollie have to duck as they barely make it out in time. Emma slows the boat and watches as Ray continues to try to resuscitate Blake. He gives up, seeing it isn’t working. Emma cries. But then Ray presses again, blowing air into her mouth. Blake spits up water and sits up, dazed but alive. Ben and Ollie cry in each other’s arms; Blake and her parents do the same.
The scene cuts to Dr. Hayes and the journalist watching the news. The journalist tells him he did good. He thanks her, saying they all did. The news reports that early warning helped save thousands. A reporter on the news speaks of how the National Guard and FEMA, along with other volunteers, have been pouring into the state to help with the recovery.
The reporters’ coverage moves to a rescue camp on the cliff by the Golden Gate, now wrecked. A young couple reunites there. Others stick up photos of lost loved ones on a memorial fence. People look at the faces of the people they have lost, whose photos are just visible through the backlit printouts on the fence.
Ben walks over on crutches and gives Blake her necklaces, saying he found them on the boat. She thanks him, pressing her chin into his neck. Her parents thank Ben and Ollie for being there for Blake. Ben says, “It’s more like she was there for us.”
The group of survivors, holding each other’s shoulders, look out over the devastated San Francisco Bay as the sun sets. A large American flag unfurls over the bridge. Emma asks, “What now?” Ray says, “We rebuild.” The film ends with the characters turning away from the vista and walking through the camp.
Analysis
The climactic scene of San Andreas builds further on the themes of rescue, responsibility, and grief. Although Ray locates Blake in the flooded building, he dives to find her trapped behind a glass partition he cannot break through. Peyton heightens the tension as Ray and Blake take breaths in a rapidly diminishing pocket of air near the ceiling before diving back down to find yet again that they can’t reach each other.
In an instance of situational irony, Blake seems to die the same way Mallory did: by drowning. Ray, who has lived ever since with the guilt of not having been able to save his daughter, watches through an unbreakable glass panel as his other daughter gives up and inhales water into her lungs before going still. The sight of Blake drowning enrages Ray, urging him to try again and finally to discover a way to her side of the glass. However, Ray initially cannot revive her with CPR—a rescue technique that involves restarting a person’s breathing with rhythmic presses on the chest and by breathing air into a person’s lungs.
The theme of ingenuity returns with Ben’s inability to break the window that keeps Emma and the rescue boat outside. The sight of Blake lying unconscious makes Emma act quickly and decisively, and she drives the boat straight through the window while ducking. Emma’s maneuver proves prescient, as the building falls just as the characters speed to safety in the flood waters that cover the streets of downtown San Francisco.
With Ray’s failure to revive Blake, Peyton brings back the theme of grief. Ben, Ollie, Emma, and Ray—and with them, the viewer—all momentarily live with the reality that Blake has died. However, Ray refuses to let another daughter die because he cannot rescue her. When he sees Emma’s sorrow, Ray is motivated to try reviving Blake again. This time, he manages to get her breathing. The family hug each other, reunited at last.
In the film’s denouement, a sense of calmness and humility pervades the mood as people take stock of what has happened. Dr. Hayes and Serena, the journalist who came to interview him and ended up helping transmit a warning to the nation, are relieved to have been able to save thousands of lives. Peyton then portrays the cooperative recovery efforts that would follow a major natural disaster; he also shows the public mourning and heart-warming reunions.
In the final scene, the main characters of the film stand together and look out at the Golden Gate Bridge, which, although destroyed, is proudly covered in an American flag. Blake affectionately leans her chin on Ben’s shoulder, a gesture suggestive of the relationship they have started. Ray and Emma are together as well, having reconciled their marriage through the experience of rescuing Blake and processing unexpressed grief over Mallory. Despite the earthquake’s upheaval, the film ends on an optimistic note as the characters intend to rebuild what society has lost.
