What would a father give up for his sons?
That’s the question at the heart of The Water Diviner, the directorial debut of Academy Award winning actor Russell Crowe. The film, which also stars Crowe, follows the journey of Australian farmer Joshua Connor, a man whose abilities of divining water from the sun scorched fields of the Outback lead him on a quest to bring his sons home from war.
Much has been made about the move. Besides being the first time Crowe has stepped behind the camera for one of his films, it also marks the first screen-worthy retelling of one of the bloodiest campaigns of World War I.
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The Battle of Gallipoli may not be memorable for those of us in the West but it is an event stitched into the very fabric of Australian heritage. A long, merciless fight that ended with hundreds of thousands of casualties for both the Australian armed forces and their enemies, soldiers of the Ottoman Empire. Flash forward 100 years later and its significance can still be felt here, in Connor’s story.
We first meet the farmer as he and his wife struggle to deal with the reality of their loss. All three of their sons are presumed dead on the shores of Gallipoli and while Connor works to move on with his life, his wife cannot. Following her death, Connor makes a promise to bring their sons back home, to be laid to rest with their mother. On his journey he encounters a Turkish woman Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her son Orhan (Dylan Georgiades) who run a hotel in Istanbul and who’ve experienced their own losses thanks to the terrible war. His relationship with both sparks his understanding and compassion, something he desperately needs when faced with meeting Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdoğan), a Turkish officer known as The Assassin, who may have been responsible for his sons’ death.
While the beginning of the film seems rather bleak, a flicker of hope soon comes when Connor realizes his oldest son, Arthur (Ryan Corr), may in fact be alive. Much like his search for water, his parental intuition and love for his child forces him to continue his journey, risking his life and those of the people he’s come to care about in order to discover the truth.
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Crowe, along with the rest of the cast, many of whom come from Australian and Turkish backgrounds, spent weeks training at his farm before shooting the film. The acting boot camp included everything from nightly lectures by university professors to firearms training, horseback riding and survival skills courses. It’s the kind of intense preparation and commitment not seen often and it translates onto the screen. Each scene is filled with purpose and each actor’s performance comes with its own unique intention. There’s a feeling that the people on screen aren’t just playing characters in a movie, they’re doing their best to bring truth, humor, compassion and respect to the real men, women and children affected by this unforgotten tragedy.
The stunning setting shot both in Australia and Turkey, the dedication of the actors and the especially incredible performances of Kurylenko and Erdoğan, coalesce to make The Water Diviner an emotional and incredibly beautiful, must-see film.
Yes, you may cry, but you’ll also walk away with a new understanding, not only of a little-told history but of the power of love and forgiveness, two things that can help shape our future.
The Water Diviner opens everywhere April 24th.
