World War I was kind of a mess. I challenge anybody to tell me, reasonably, what any of the participants were fighting about. Retaliation? Imperialism? Anti-imperialism? Prestige? Ethnic cleansing? Rumor? Sorry, rumour? Boredom? Soccer riot escalated? “It just seemed like a good idea at the time?” I’m not entirely sure why, but in 1915, the Aussies were pitted against the Ottoman Empire on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Honestly, this feels like an NCAA bracket – “the Aussies fought off the pesky Serbs in the first round and are now taking on the #1 seed in the Middle East bracket …”
We are now 100 years removed from the action, so yeah, I think I can take it a little lightly — Especially if the battle itself feels like an afterthought. The Water Diviner is about an Australian father, Connor (Russell Crowe, who also directs here), who in the wake of his wife’s suicide, has come to claim the bodies of his three boys lost at Gallipoli four years previous.
The Water Diviner makes sure that while there is war and loss and pain, we never really learn anything about that stuff because we might lose focus on Crowe. “Camera on me, boys, camera on me; I’m the story here.” Farmer Connor, who seems to have a divine gift of some sort for finding water (hence, the title, duh), decides to make the long journey to Turkey to find his sons and return them home. He insists that he can find them if he can just get by the army red tape.
This could have been a really good film: An awful battle, a g
rieving couple, a quest for catharsis, an understanding that in many ways the battle is still being fought, and at its heart the pain and determination of a father. And, dutifully, The Water Diviner hit all of these points, albeit some harder than others, and then added two huge mistakes – a romance and a mercy killing. The mercy kill happens late; I’m not going to describe it, but the romance? Good gravy, why?
In what can only be described as “let’s cast the whitest Turkish-looking people we can find,” Olga Kurylenko and Dylan Georgiades were selected as the widower and child who will comprise Connor’s family in the unlikely Water Diviner II. I suppose it’s not a new idea to include romance in your war film, but it’s a bad one here. Connor came to Turkey looking to collect dead bodies in memory of his dead wife. Innkeeper Ayshe (Kurylenko) is just trying to put her life back together; her husband died in the same war for the other side. So, he’s lost a wife to the Turks and she’s lost a husband to the Aussies. Awwwww. They both still have love to give – and aside from that whole cultural and “your spouse killed my spouse” thing, these crazy kids can still make it work. It’s poetic and sick at the same time.
The Water Diviner is easily among the top 10 films made about the battle of Gallipoli. At least by now I can tell who fought whom without really knowing why. And the power vacuum described here in the after years? Fuhgeddaboutit. A quest for catharsis, I’ll stick with that.
A man who lost everything decides to go
Half a world away, doncha know?
To track slain kin
His chances are thin
In Turkey, they’re going to have Crowe
Rated R, 111 Minutes
D: Russell Crowe
W: Andrew Knight, Andrew Anastasios
Genre: Pick a genre, any genre – war, romance, action, drama, comedy, fighting, revenge, sport. We got it all, baby
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: WWI enthusiasts, maybe
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Russell Crowe haters
