The Water Diviner
Directed by: Russell Crowe
Written by: Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios
Starring: Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Yilmaz Erdogan, Cem Yilmaz, Jai Courtney, Ryan Corr, James Fraser, Ben O'Toole, Steve Bastoni, Dylan Georgiades
Drama/War - 111 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Apr 2015
Written by: Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios
Starring: Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Yilmaz Erdogan, Cem Yilmaz, Jai Courtney, Ryan Corr, James Fraser, Ben O'Toole, Steve Bastoni, Dylan Georgiades
Drama/War - 111 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Apr 2015
I remember reading a journal article in college explaining how World War I was a defensive war. Machine gun technology, barbed wire, and trench warfare all combined to ensure the defenders of a piece of land had the upper hand. The problem was the military leadership on all sides thought offense was superior, hence directions ordering wave after wave of futile lunges toward the other side as thousands of soldiers were thoroughly slaughtered during each push. Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner is a post-war reconciliation for one father who sent his three sons off to fight in a strange, far away land. Beginning as a ‘man on a mission’ film, The Water Diviner sprawls into family melodrama and opposites attract territory while ladling in some action soup to keep the narrative warm. Russell Crowe’s first directorial effort works best when on the battlefield and making peace with the past and struggles a bit during the emotional soap opera.
The Battle of Gallipoli is etched into the minds of Australians and New Zealanders. Answering the call of King and country in World War I, they were charged with attacking the Ottoman Empire through Turkey in 1915. After eight months of siege and trench warfare, they cut their losses and went home, leaving 10,000 dead behind. The Turks lost 70,000. Four years later, farmer, rancher, and well digger, Joshua Conner (Crowe, 2014's Noah), travels to then Constantinople from the Australian outback to bring home the bodies of his sons. Conner encounters a sympathetic but indifferent British war office, a precocious boy and his attractively hostile mother at his hotel, and witnesses a growing Turkish nationalism in the streets seething under British control.
The Battle of Gallipoli is etched into the minds of Australians and New Zealanders. Answering the call of King and country in World War I, they were charged with attacking the Ottoman Empire through Turkey in 1915. After eight months of siege and trench warfare, they cut their losses and went home, leaving 10,000 dead behind. The Turks lost 70,000. Four years later, farmer, rancher, and well digger, Joshua Conner (Crowe, 2014's Noah), travels to then Constantinople from the Australian outback to bring home the bodies of his sons. Conner encounters a sympathetic but indifferent British war office, a precocious boy and his attractively hostile mother at his hotel, and witnesses a growing Turkish nationalism in the streets seething under British control.
Sneaking over to off limits Gallipoli, Conner encounters the remnants of horrific destruction. The sole inhabitants are the grave diggers who have the burden of separating Australian bones from Turkish bones. Led by Lt Col Cyril Hughes (Jai Courtney, 2015's Insurgent), the accounting for and internment of decayed and slaughtered remains looks to be a macabre and haphazard process. The Australian’s nemesis during the Gallipoli campaign, Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan), is present for the process because as the battle’s victor, he is in the best position to know where the bodies are buried. Acting as a catalyst for the theme of ‘there are two sides to every battle’ or ‘war is hell on all sides’, Maj Hasan champions Conner’s cause as he says, “He is the only father who came looking.”
This part of the film is the reason The Water Diviner can begin with the statement “Based on true events”. The entire story is based off of one line written in a letter by the real life Lt Col Hughes. He off-handedly mentions a father travelling to the battlefield looking for the remains of his boys. Nothing more is known about the man and whether or not he succeeded. Joshua Conner and his Turkish escapades are a complete fiction created by writers Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios. Spinning a yarn about a grieving father seeking closure is a fine jumping off point for a contemplative film about the consequences of war. Where Kinght and Anastasios trip up are creating the circumstances for Conner to aid and fall for a grieving Turkish widow and Conner’s uncanny sixth sense.
We first meet Conner as he walks around the Western Australia desert with some sticks looking for hidden water. Conner uses the same intuition walking around the battlefield. If he can feel water, he can feel his sons. He can see in his mind’s eye how his boys fought in battle and what happened next. Doing my best to avoid this eye-rolling supernatural ability, the battle scenes Conner recalls are so visceral, The Water Diviner should aptly be characterized an anti-war film. In movies that glorify war and its heroes, when a man gets shot, he just falls down dead and never moves again. Russell Crowe is smart enough to show what really happens when a human body absorbs bullets; a man will writhe in pain and moan for hours as he slowly and agonizingly bleeds and suffocates to death. If you want to make a film showcasing the depravity and incomprehensibleness of war, you do it this way.
I don’t think I’m reading too much into the film to call it anti-war; however, there are some folks out there who think The Water Diviner is actually pro-Turkish, anti-Greek, and anti-Armenian. For example, Salon.com film critic Andrew O’Hehir calls it ‘disgraceful’ that Russell Crowe made a movie in Turkey around the time of the Armenian genocide and didn’t include it. How about because The Water Diviner is about a distraught father looking to properly bury his boys; you think a character like that is looking for signs of atrocities against a people he has probably never even heard of and a genocide that started four years before he even set foot on the same continent? Throttle back Mr. O’Hehir.
There is much to admire about The Water Diviner. It shows the audience up close the horror of war instead of patriotic hysteria and brings back into light a 100-year-old battle most have forgotten about, except the Aussies. It also shows a new side to Istanbul we have never seen before; The Water Diviner is the first film ever to shoot inside the Blue Mosque. There is just as much material to ignore about The Water Diviner including Conner’s sixth sense and his involvement with a ready-made, emotionally-comforting Turkish family. In one of the biggest stretches in the history of “Based on true events”, The Water Diviner is a fine middle of the road film. There are better and more effective ‘consequences of war’ movies out there, but kudos to Russell Crowe for bringing back not only a forgotten battle, but an increasingly forgotten war into the spotlight.
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