The Water Diviner

Dir: Russell Crowe

2014

****

Before sitting down to watch The Water Diviner, a film I knew little about, I did wonder how and why, an Australian of all people, could think about making a film about Gallipoli after Peter Weir had made his masterpiece on the subject. The answer, of course, is that he, Russell Crowe, didn’t, rather he made a film about what happened after the battle of Gallipoli and how wounds are best healed. Loosely based on the book by Andrew Anastasios and Dr Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios, The Water Diviner deals with regret, honour and redemption. The film begins in 1919, just after the First World War, and centres around Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe who stars and directs), an Australian farmer and water diviner. His three sons Arthur (Ryan Corr), Edward (James Fraser), and Henry (Ben O'Toole) served with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps during the military campaign in Gallipoli four years previously and are presumed dead. After his wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) commits suicide out of grief, Joshua resolves to bring his sons' bodies home and bury them next to their mother. Joshua travels to Turkey and stays in a hotel in Istanbul run by war-widowed Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), but is unable to travel to Gallipoli by road. Ayshe treats Joshua with contempt at first but learning the purpose of his journey, she tells him to bribe a local fisherman to travel to Gallipoli by boat. When he arrives, Joshua learns that ANZACs are engaged in a mass burial detail and all civilians are banned. Major Hasan (Yılmaz Erdoğan), a Turkish Army officer assisting the ANZACs, persuades the ANZAC captain Lt-Col Cyril Hughes (Jai Courtney) to prioritize helping Joshua with his search, arguing that while they can’t necessarily every father who has lost their sons, he is the only father that has come looking. After finding Edward and Henry's graves, Joshua sees in his dreams that Arthur survives the battle. Hasan recognizes Joshua's surname and tells him that Arthur might have been taken prisoner. Joshua returns to Istanbul, but fails to find out which prison camp Arthur was transferred to, as many Turkish records have been burned. He returns to Ayshe's hotel and learns that she is being pressed to marry her brother-in-law, Omer. Their argument becomes heated and Omer retreats when Joshua intervenes. Ayshe lashes out, blaming Joshua for making things worse and tells him to leave. As Joshua leaves the hotel, Omer and a few of his friends attack him, only to be stopped by Hasan's subordinate, Sergeant Jemal (Cem Yılmaz). Jemal takes Joshua to Hasan, who explains that the Greeks have invaded and they are going to defend their country as the British are not intervening. Joshua decides to travel with Hasan's group, who will pass through the region where his son might be. As Joshua returns to the hotel to retrieve his belongings, Ayshe apologizes for her earlier words. While on the train, Greek soldiers attack with only Jemal, Hasan and Joshua surviving the initial assault. Joshua saves Hasan as a Greek officer prepares to execute him but Jemal is killed in the resulting struggle. Joshua and Hasan flee to a nearby town where they spot a windmill, which Joshua saw in his recurring dream, the sort he taught his son to build before he went to war. There he finds Arthur alive but traumatized. Arthur reveals that at the end of the battle, Edward was still alive but badly wounded. He pleaded with Arthur to end his suffering, and Arthur reluctantly complied. Blaming himself for his brothers' deaths, Arthur felt he could never return to his family. The Greek soldiers who previously attacked the train begin to attack the town, and the two men try to escape through the mountains. Arthur refuses to follow his father, but relents when Joshua says that without his wife and sons, he has nowhere else to go. They successfully evade the Greek army and return to Ayshe's hotel. The film ends with Joshua drinking a cup of coffee made by Ayshe with lots of sugar in it, which, thanks to an earlier conversation, indicates that she has fallen in love with him. I have a few issues with the story but these are generally overshadowed by what I really liked about it. I really didn’t think it needed a romantic story line, especially as Joshua still clearly loved his wife who had only recently killed herself. Life goes on for sure, but it was a little too soon I feel. I also felt the dream sequences let the film down, surely finding Arthur by chance would have had far more impact. It would have certainly made the film a lot less predictable, one of the big things it has against it. However, I hugely respect the film for the way it handles war. It addresses wrongs made on both sides and shows that there really aren’t any winners in war. It looks at prejudice and redemption without shying away from the brutality of things. The depictions of one of the brothers, dying slowly and helpless is a shocking and upsetting scene but exactly the sort of thing a film about war should never shy away from. The story concept originated from a single line in a letter written by Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Hughes who was a worker in the Imperial War Graves unit. The footnote simply said, “One old chap managed to get here from Australia, looking for his son’s grave.” After a year of research the writers were unable to identify the man or his son which gave them the freedom to imagine a story which would become their screenplay and thankfully they saw fit to examine both sides of the historic battle. While I feel the film was a little ambitious I thought it was very well constructed. That said, co-screenwriter Andrew Knight's own grandfather had fought at Gallipoli, so he and fellow writer Andrew Anastasios were able to derive elements from his diary. In addition, they read a lot of Turkish accounts of the war and the period immediately after to try to tap into the prevailing mood in the country and the different political and social divisions that existed. The screenwriting duo of Knight and Anastasios actually based the water diviner aspect of the character of Joshua on Anastasios's own grandfather, who was a real water diviner in the countryside of New South Wales in Australia. It’s personal passions that make good films like this and it comes through as clear as day. It is a fine debut feature by Russell Crowe and it has a great script, but it also represents a sad farewell to the brilliant cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, as this would be his final film.