Movie Review: The Water Diviner - The war that began all wars

Movie: The Water Diviner (U/A) 114 min
Cast: Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Jai Courtney, Yilmaz Erdogan, Cem Yilmaz
Director: Russell Crowe
Rating: 2.5 / 5

At the end of the First World War, Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) embarks on a quest to Gallipoli, Turkey, to recover the bodies of his lost sons.

All three of them fought in the Turkish theatre, in the dangerous Gallipoli campaign that led to heavy losses in life. In Turkey, his attempt to find his sons runs into difficulties with Army bureaucrats. However, he finds sympathetic allies among local Turks, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her son Orhan (Dylan Georgiades) as well as Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan) who commanded the Ottoman forces during the battle of Gallipoli and works with the British war office to find the graves of the dead on the battlefield.

It is interesting that it’s now a hundred years since the First World War began. The events and grudges of that war have been eclipsed by the far more devastating Second World War but in many cases, especially in West Asia, many issues of contemporary society were first formed in that conflict. In one scene a British Army major comments on the nationalist uprising in Turkey, noting that another war is beginning, only for Major Hasan to tell him that it’s the same war which hasn’t ended. As a history lesson, especially in portraying the tragic breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the ways it affects the lives of ordinary people, Russell Crowe’s directorial debut is quite illuminating and interesting. It is, however, not nearly as successful as a film.

The Water Diviner’s strength and its weakness stems from its old-fashioned storytelling and highly naïve approach. The film has its heart in the right place, its humanism and cultural sensitivity is refreshing, but it tends to make for preachy filmmaking. With the exception of Kurylenko’s Ayshe, the characters tend to be mouthpieces. Major Hasan never explains or clarifies his generosity towards Joshua, nor does he develop as a character in his own right.

Their friendship is presented as a given; it’s not very believable or convincing. The film also struggles to balance the personal story of Joshua Connor seeking his sons’ bodies with the historical backdrop. At times, Joshua, the father, stops being his own character in his own story and ends up becoming an observer. This diffusion of focus, bifurcation of one film into two, leads to a film that is entertaining in parts rather than as a whole.

Despite being his first film as a director, Russell Crowe shows a nice eye for landscape and visual detail. The opening sequence, where Joshua Connor unearths an underground well leads to a moment of grace. Here, the submerged character presents an image of baptism. More interesting is its focus on the institutions of Imperial War Graves. Post-war sequences where the Turkish and British commanders return to the battlefield and chart out positions where soldiers had died on their command are fairly rare in war movies, putting across the futility of war with a singular poignancy. It brings to light, in a very cinematic way, the notion of memory and how it can be preserved.

My favourite line is a British bureaucrat noting that World War I was the first war where the Army gave a damn about honouring the fallen, when even the heroes of Waterloo were buried in unmarked graves covered with lime.

Russell Crowe is an excellent actor whose remarkable performance in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah was neglected. He plays a fairly marginal role in his own film, generously sharing spotlight with his co-stars and giving them more screen space. He manages to get a wonderful performance from Olga Kurylenko whose character is highly compelling and her performance is deeply empathetic and warm, communicating an unspoken tragedy and bitter tension with a few glances. The Water Diviner could have been a better film — more focused and economical. However, it redeems itself through glimpses of warmth and genuine sincerity, a desire to communicate a message of universal brotherhood. Russell Crowe could certainly direct more films based on the strength of this debut.

The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society