The Water Diviner (2014)
Certified: 15
Duration: 111 minutes
Directed by: Russell Crowe
Starring: Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Dylan Georgiades, Yılmaz Erdoğan, Cem Yılmaz, Jai Courtney, Ryan Corr, Jacqueline McKenzie, Isabel Lucas, Mert Firat, Daniel Wyllie, Damon Herriman
KRS Releasing Ltd
The Water Diviner marks Russell Crowe’s first foray into direction. His adaptation of the historical novel by Andrew Anastasios and Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios is a very emotional film. It is set in Gallipoli in World War I, a period which still resounds heavily in Australia’s national conscience. But while the film is about war, it deals more with the post-war effects, with the coming to terms of war and with the balance between loss and peace.
Crowe is Joshua Connor, a farmer who is recounting his adventures. He remembers his three sons, Arthur, Henry and Edward, who have been lost on the war-torn beaches of Gallipoli.
His wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) had been stricken with grief. So Connor decides it’s high time to bring his sons back. He journeys to Constantinople and when he arrives there after three months, he is not allowed to go on the battlefield site.
He then meets the streetwise kid Orhan (Dylan Georgiades), who takes him around the market and then to his mother, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), who runs a hotel. He also gets to know Orhan’s uncle, Omer (Steve Bastoni).
Ayshe helps Connor by getting a fisherman to take him to Gallipoli’s shores. Here he meets Hughes (Jai Courtenay) and Turkish officers Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdoğan) and Sgt Jemal (Cem Yilmaz) who had been in the war. They are coordinating the war recovery and between Aussies and Turks, the tension is continuous.
Crowe brings to the screen his usual mark of quiet and strong heroism, one that needs not be overstated. His presence shines strongly in a film that needs a hero as it tries to battle the futility of war.
The script in itself is built on one coincidence after another and perhaps with another actor in the main role, the story would have looked contrived. However, Crowe’s determination and infectious energy takes us along for the ride and makes us feel a sense of duty that is palpable on so many levels.
The film is also rich in its depiction of the secondary characters. Kurylenko as a widowed mother simply fills the screen with her beauty and sense of calmness. Georgiades and Bastoni also provide interesting performances, giving flesh to characters that could have been simple two-dimensional stereotypes but here are given adequate space to develop.
The film also manages to ride on and embrace the wounds that were opened in World War I and which, for countries like Australia, are as still as open and fresh as ever.
In a soft manipulative manner, Crowe makes his hero the catalyst of such emotional outpouring while at the same time giving the film a strong fibre to it. Thus scenes of learning cricket, coffee drinking and a hundred lit candles, that would have been seen out of place or simply soppy in another movie, here fit smoothly. This is a very commendable first film that, despite everything, succeeds much more than expected.