The immediate draw to The Water Diviner is to settle in for Russell Crowe‘s directorial debut. From the outside the story doesn’t exactly inspire a “must see” attitude and, to be entirely honest, the film itself is passably mediocre. Not a great time at the movies, not a bad time, but simply a time. Crowe seems to be experimenting at times with his camerawork and a couple of curious zoom in close-ups caught me a little off-guard, but it’s a good start with some of the editorial decisions seeming more defensive than anything else, attempting to ensure he had all his ducks in a row rather than getting too experimental with the overall final cut.
On top of directing, Crowe also stars as the film’s main character, Joshua Connor, an Australian farmer whose world is torn apart following the end of the Battle of Gallipoli. Four years after his three sons died in battle, Joshua leaves his native land in search of their bodies, hoping to bring them home for a proper burial. Delving, at times, into rather dark territory, The Water Diviner also includes a cute young boy, Orhan (Dylan Georgiades), who’s oh-so-cute, and oh-so-clever and the obvious, eventual love interest in the young boy’s mother, Ayshe, played by the striking Olga Kurylenko. These two are playing cliched characters that behave in rather cliched ways, but Georgiades is never so grating he becomes annoying (he comes close though) and Kurylenko does what she can with a role that really could have been a little more subtle and far more effective.
For that matter, that’s the case for this whole film. Crowe is inclined to continually flash back to Joshua’s sons’ time at war and he ratchets the sound up to an eleven. Other than a select few, these scenes are entirely unnecessary. Joshua feels a responsibility for his sons’ deaths, and while the scene where he searches for where they eventually died deserves some measure of exposition, the decision to constantly bring us back to the gunfire is so time consuming it slows the entire feature down. And this is all without getting too deep into the sounds of one man as he painfully gasps for his final breaths of air for what feels like an eternity. If The Water Diviner was that kind of film — which is to say something Steve McQueen might direct — it would be easier to justify this kind of agony portrayed on screen, but as it stands, this is more of a soft lob with a bit of edge, this isn’t Solomon Northup’s tiptoes, squishing in the mud and looking for footing.
Nevertheless, Crowe’s performance here is rock solid as it usually is. You can see the pain and concern of a father in his eyes whether he’s looking for his sons or dealing with Orhan. Yilmaz ErdoÄŸan plays a Turkish officer who fought in the Battle of Gallipoli and still finds his people fighting today and as much as his character is smack dab, on-the-nose, Erdogan, as well as Cem Yilmaz as a fellow sergeant, are both welcome contributors. Erdogan especially is a highlight, offering yet another perspective of the war at hand as well as the interplay between different cultures and systems of belief.
Crowe has compiled a strong crew behind the scenes, which includes Peter Jackson‘s longtime Middle Earth cinematographer Andrew Lesnie whose lighting and camera movements give the film brief moments of majesty, though even he wasn’t able to make the battle scenes feel as epic as they were meant to seem. Crowe’s crew must crank up the sound to distract you from the fact these scenes are not only unwarranted, but feel incredibly small, almost as if they were shot in a tiny field somewhere with the camera doing everything it can to keep only the small space in frame so as not to ruin the attempted grand illusion.
The story is aided, though, by two-time Oscar nominee David Hirschfelder‘s score, which never gets in the way or too big for its own good. As much as Crowe’s sound department attempts to cover up the battle sequences with gun fire, Hirschfelder’s music remains solid, and never overwhelming.
Some of the curiosities, though, remain, beginning with the title as there is never any indication as to how Joshua’s water-divining capabilities help him find his sons and there’s also a continued reference to “Arabian Nights”, which never generates any kind of foothold or real takeaway. It’s a film with more than its share of loose strands and scenes that seemed to simply be plopped into the narrative rather than emerging organically.
The Water Diviner is a movie that feels like it’s a directorial debut. It feels like someone getting used to their craft, experimenting with some things and remaining as traditional as possible with most things so as to never lose control. Should Crowe continue down this path, as it seems he intends to, we could be looking at some great things in the future, looking back at this film as the jumping off point toward a fascinating directorial career.
