Review of The Water Diviner (2014) by Dave M — 04 May 2015

World War I and its immediate aftermath is the backdrop for Russell Crowe's "The Water Diviner" (R, 1:51), a story about a father's love. You don't need to know much about The Great War to appreciate this film. The script tells you what you need to understand about the history of it all, but if you'd like to appreciate the film even more, you might want to read the next paragraph. (If not, you could just skip to the third paragraph.).

One of the most famous battles in World War I (1914-1918) was the Gallipoli Campaign (1915-1916). It was fought on a peninsula which overlooks the entrance to the Dardanelles. Beyond those straits lay Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. What's left of the Ottoman Empire is now the nation of Turkey and its capital is Ankara, but in late 1915, those changes were several years away and the Ottoman Turks were fighting for their empire against foreign invaders. As a member of "The Central Powers" (the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian and the German empires), the Ottomans fought against "The Allies" which included Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and, starting in 1917, the U.S. At the Battle of Gallipoli, the Turks eventually forced the invading troops from France and Britain and the colonies of the British Empire, including ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) soldiers, to abandon their Gallipoli Campaign, but not before over 100,000 men lay dead and twice that many had been injured.

In this film, Russell Crowe plays an Australian farmer named Joshua Connor. It's 1919, the year after World War I ended, and four years since his sons went off to fight... but never returned. Connor busies himself trying to make a living off of the land of rural Australia. Part of that process involves digging wells. He uses a pair of divining rods to help him decide where to dig. It's not an exact science. In fact, much like a Ouija board, a divining rod probably only works because the user wants it to work... NEEDS it to work. Finding water with divining rods probably has as much to do with the instinct of the user than anything else. Fortunately for Connor, he has VERY good instincts. Yet, Connor's wife, Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie), teetering on the brink of insanity, berates him for being able to find water, but being unable to find his sons.

Connor promises Eliza that he will indeed find their boys (Ryan Corr, James Fraser and Ben O'Toole) and bring them home for a proper burial.

Connor makes the three-month journey from Australia to Turkey, which only represents the beginning of his hardships. Upon arriving in Constantinople, a young boy runs off with Connor's only bag. Connor chases Orhan (Dylan Georgiades) and doesn't catch up to him until Orhan has led Connor to the hotel that Orhan's family runs. It is a nice place, but Connor is met with thinly veiled hostility from Orhan's mother, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), whose Turkish husband died in the war, likely at the hands of one of Connor's countrymen or their allies. Ayshe's brother-in-law, Omer (Steve Bastoni) - and, if he gets his way, her second husband - welcomes Connor and he checks in. The family (especially Orhan), warms to Connor but figuring out how to find his sons is even tougher. The British consul's office won't give civilians permission to go to Gallipoli, so Conner has to find his own way. When he finally makes it there, he meets an Australian officer (Jai Courtney) and his Turkish counterpart (Yilmaz Edrogan) who are working together on a graves detail at the massive cemetery that is Gallipoli. Connor first has to convince these men to help him, or at least allow him, to look for his sons. Then, it's going to take all his divining talents to find their remains... and even more than that to solve the mystery he uncovers.

"The Water Diviner" is Crowe's feature film directorial debut, and he handles the job well... mostly. The flashbacks of the battle scenes are as meticulously staged and gut wrenchingly real as anything this side of "Saving Private Ryan". It's also nice to see mostly real Turks playing the parts of Turks and mostly Aussies playing the parts of Australians (although Crowe was actually born in New Zealand and some of the Turkish characters are played by actors from Down Under). The script and the editing tell a very personal story, keep it interesting, and skillfully reveal the film's secrets.

Unfortunately, this film may not be the most accessible in terms of its setting and its general story. The events depicted all took place 95-100 years ago and the Battle of Gallipoli doesn't mean much to most Americans, while in Australia and New Zealand, the date the invasion began is a holiday akin to our Memorial Day. Also, the movie gets a bit off track with some plot points that feel contrived and by making too much of Connor's special abilities, without ever explaining why he's special. Are his talents supernatural? Is he lucky? Or is he just really, really good? And, why doesn't Crowe make the answer clear? Between Connor's vaguely divine talent for divining and a highly improbable romance, this movie almost seems as much a fantasy as a drama "inspired by true events." It's a good first effort, Mr. Crowe, but keep working at it. "B".