Review: The Water Diviner

True stories seem to be all Hollywood cares about these days. Or, rather, films based off of true stories -- a distinction which audiences seem to forget as they watch film after film and incorporate fabrications into their personal reference of history. It's a bit worrying to me that people don't understand that artistic liberties must sometimes be taken, and historical accuracy compromised, in order to tell a good story.

One such example is THE WATER DIVINER, Russell Crowe's directorial debut about an Australian man who travels to Turkey to search for his three missing sons in the aftermath of the Battle of Gallipoli. The film, written by Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios, takes quite a few liberties in telling the story, tinging historical events with a bit of mysticism (ie Joshua tracks down his sons in the same format that he tracks down water).

Crowe plays our protagonist, Joshua Connor, a farmer who practices the pseudoscience of water divining, apparently a useful skill for Australia's dry climate. The war has taken his three sons -- a tragedy which his wife, Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) blames him for. When Eliza commits suicide, Joshua promises at her graveside to bring her sons home to her, if only to be buried together.



Joshua travels to Turkey, with very little information to find his sons' bodies. After a bit of an incident with a kid who wants him to stay at his mother's hotel, he concedes and strikes up a friendship with the boy (Dylan Georgiades) and his mother, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), who has lost her husband to the war. Upon visiting the battlefield in which his boys were supposed to have died, Joshua somehow manages to win the hearts of the Turkish soldiers who are recovering the bodies, and begins to search for his sons the only way he knows how: he tracks them, as if tracking water under the ground.

This is a decent story, but not a great story: at times, it tries a little too hard to wring out the audience's emotions, handing out flashbacks and tender moments with a heavy hand. The beginning of the film is especially rocky, structured a bit like an over-budgeted student film. But despite its overindulgence in emotional manipulation, it can be said that this film has a lot of heart. The motivation of a father looking for his sons; the comradery of the Turkish soldiers; the tough choices that a soldier must make; all of these things makes it worth the watch.

I'll put all of his past work aside when I say this: for a first-time feature director, Crowe didn't do too bad. Not great, but not bad. Maybe with such encouragement, his next one will come a bit closer to the mark of excellence.

THE WATER DIVINER is now playing at the Midtown Cinema!