The Water Diviner
The Water Diviner is the directorial debut of Russell Crowe; he is also the star. Set at the end of World War I, Crowe is Connor, one of those characters who can use sticks and intuition to locate a likely place to dig for water in a near desert, in this case, the Australian Outback. He lives a hardscrabble life with his wife and 3 sons until his sons enlist in ANZAC, go off to war and are apparently all killed on the same day in that slaughterhouse otherwise known as the battle of Gallipoli in Turkey. Connor’s wife Natalia (Isabel Lucas) is traumatized to the brink of insanity; descends into a fantasy world and eventually kills herself. Having an insight (not unlike his water location) that he will find his sons, Connor, who has nothing left to live for in Australia, travels to Turkey for his seemingly futile quest to find out what happened to his sons and probably bring their remains back to Australia to be buried.
Most of the rest of this film takes place in Turkey, after the war. Britain is occupying the country in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The resentful muslim population is becoming rebellious and the seeds are being sown for a revolution that will eventually produce an independent nation. Connor wants to travel to Gallipoli where British military officials are still sifting through massive amounts of human remains, attempting to identify bodies and while trying to avoid being killed by unexploded ordnance. They have no time for the small, personal quest of Connor. In a separate sub-plot, the hotel where Connor is staying is home to a attractive woman Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), widow to a dead soldier, mother to a young son and obligated by custom to become a second wife to his unappealing brother. Connor is attracted to her and likes her son. He also becomes entangled in the fate of a former Ottoman officer, who helps Connor and has aspirations to join the revolution of the Young Turks. What, if anything, Connor finds of his sons and what develops from the longing gazes between Connor and Ayshe, make up the rest of the movie, which I will not reveal.
So far, Water Diviner has received mixed reviews as historical fiction. It begins with one of those “based in fact” statements, but the history part seems to be mainly the context of the war and the battle of Gallipoli, an important milestone in Australian and New Zealand identity. Whether a water diviner actually want to Turkey on his quest is the fictional part. Like anything in historical fiction, the possibility always exists for ideological conflict. In this case, the film has been accused of not parsing out blame to the correct parties for the war, not mentioning the Armenian Genocide, defaming the Greeks, etc, but, the plot of this FICTIONAL story isn’t about ANY of those; it’s the fallout of a horrible war.
It’s the story of this one guy on his quest, set in this awful time. I thought the movie was fairly good and a well told story. In my guise as a history geek, I’m fascinated at how WW I still resonates though subsequent events; this story plays out a tiny piece of that. I can’t say that I expected or received any great insights, but I enjoyed it as a historical period piece, a near cross-cultural romance and a reminder of just how godawful that war was and how the resentments from it have festered for the past century. Crowe’s direction was good enough, nothing ground-breaking, but nothing bad either. Cinematography by Andrew Lesnie, was excellent. Most of the cast was Turkish, none of them known to me, but all were quite good in their roles. Crowe did a decent job as Connor, and managed to avoid his “drunk. brawling Aussie” image problems. The ending of the story, which I will not reveal, is quite abrupt, leaving a lot unsaid, and almost seeming like a time limit rather than a plot resolution; I didn’t know WHAT to do with that. My wife and I made up our own endings on the way home. Water Diviner made a decent evening, took us to a different culture and region for its story, was engaging and quite watchable. It’s nothing great, but it’s good enough.
