The Water Diviner

The big surprise in Russell Crowe’s otherwise firmly unsurprising directorial debut, is that for a film about Gallipoli this turns out to be a film that really is about Gallipoli. That is, apart from a few opening scenes and a brief flashback or two, this is a film set entirely in Turkey, with a story that’s as much about the situation in Turkey in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire as it is about a grieving Australian looking for the bodies of his dead sons.
Victorian farmer Joshua Connor (Crowe) is a lot better at finding water on his property than he is at keeping his sons alive: all three went off to Gallipoli and died on the same day. With no reason to keep the farm going, he heads off to Turkey to find his sons’ bodies and bring them home, only to discover that British bureaucracy is standing firmly in his way. But the landlady (Olga Kurylenko) at the hotel where he’s staying – herself widowed by the war, though she does have a son who quickly takes a shine to Connor so we all know where this is leading – has a few tips for him and soon he’s storming the beaches to use his divining skills to locate the bodies. But when under the watchful eye of both the Australian commander (Jai Courtney) and the Turkish representative Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan) he only find two bodies, he starts to wonder: could one of his sons be alive? And with the situation in Turkey steadily getting worse, thanks to a Greek invasion, is there any possible way of finding him if he is?
This is largely solid, unspectacular stuff that goes for the emotions in all the expected ways and relying – as you might expect from an actor-turned-director – more on the performances to carry it than the visuals, though visually it’s more than serviceable. Crowe’s character fades a little into the background as the story progresses and the focus shifts to Hasan’s fight for his country, where an excellent performance from Erdogan makes this side of things one the film could have done with even more of. While Connor’s story does have some interesting touches around the edges (Connor’s ability to find water seems to extend to having psychic powers at a few points), it’s largely predictable and lacking in real drama. Hasan’s story is one we haven’t seen before, and for that alone Crowe deserves a thumbs up.
By Anthony Morris