The Water Diviner takes a refreshing dive into one of history’s footnotes

Last updated on: April 27, 2015 at 5:37 am by Andrew Collins

The Water Diviner takes a refreshing dive into one of history’s footnotes 2015-04-27T05:37:11-06:00 Andrew Collins

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Review of The Water Diviner, Directed by Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe’s freshman directing effort tells the story of Australian farmer Joshua Connor (Crowe), who travels to Turkey to recover the bodies of his three sons, all of whom were killed fighting in the battle of Gallipoli during World War I. On its face, Connor’s journey is a fool’s errand, and so the story is weighted with an honorable pointlessness reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan. What does it really matter that he finds his sons’ remains and buries them at home in Australia? Objectively one might say it doesn’t (the British consulate adamantly tries to convince him of as much), but when Connor’s wife dies early in the film, finding his sons becomes the one last act by which he can honor the wishes of his wife and show his love for his family – even though all of them are dead.

Set during the peak of the British Empire, The Water Diviner hearkens back to classics from the like Lawrence of Arabia and Breaker Morant, reminding us that the era is ever rich with stories. If nothing else, the film is worth watching for its profoundly empathetic look into a point of history that often gets little more than a footnote. We forget about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent struggles of the defeated Turkish people coming to grips with their identity. Few films these days are willing to tackle such an unfamiliar setting (though maybe the World War I Mediterranean theater looms larger in the Australian consciousness), but that’s part of what makes The Water Diviner so compelling.

Image Source: Wikimedia

In terms of particulars like character and metaphor, the film has moments of brilliance. The story uses a reoccurring motif from the Arabian Nights, where Connor and his sons escape the immediate travails of life – sandstorms and machine gun bullets – by imagining themselves in the tale of the magic flying carpet. This serves as a touching poetic tie-in to their respective journeys to Turkey. It’s not the heart of Arabia, of course, but to our brave Aussies it might as well be.

And yet despite Connor’s almost suicidal devotion to his sons’ memory, the most significant relationship in the film isn’t between Connor and his family or even his Turkish love-interest. It is between him and Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan), the man who led the Turkish armies at Gallipoli that killed his sons. Won over by Connor’s devotion, Hasan recognizes that this Australian man – the very face of the enemy – has no political cards to play. When Connor arrives at Gallipoli after being told he cannot go there, Hasan suggests that the British detachment responsible for identifying fallen soldiers spend just a day or two helping him, “because he is the only father who came looking.

That said, the film is not without weak points. The story flow, for instance, is stilted at times. Connor’s wife dies in the film’s opening minutes after we see her in just one brief scene – too abruptly for the audience to care as much as we ought to understand Connor’s character. (SPOILER) And when Connor reunites with one of his sons who, though presumed dead, was taken prisoner and ultimately survived the war, emotions mix. It could have been a sort of Prodigal Father moment, but rather than simply rejoicing in being together again, each man awkwardly tries to assume responsibility for the death of the others. It seemed wrong for Connor to blame himself for his sons’ death because he filled their heads with all that “King and Country” rhetoric, even though his wife clearly blames him and seems to have saddled him with a false sense of guilt. The fact that Connor never gets over this guilt is uninspiring, but perhaps it is simply a sign of his love. He wants to take on all the blame for the death that has befallen his family, and yet despite his very best efforts, despite discovering that one of his sons is alive, and despite a blossoming romance that promises a new life, we sense a lingering incompletion. The story ends on a sugary sweet note (literally), but that doesn’t mask its telling lesson about the intractable nature of guilt.

Drama

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Russell Crowe

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