Lucas Versantvoort / April 29, 2015
I’ll start by saying I wasn’t looking forward to this film. Having seen
so many films recently, I’d grown beyond sick of the trailer, not just because
of the amount of times I’d seen it, but because it’s so terribly made. Correct
me if I’m wrong, but I thought a trailer’s job was to pique your interest, not
tell half the story. But I digress. The main draw of The Water Diviner is obviously the fact it’s Russell Crowe’s
directorial debut. How did he fare? Well… Let’s just say that the film’s
supposed to be a sprawling epic set against the political backdrop of postwar Turkey,
but instead it’s mostly just sprawling…
The year is 1915. The
story centers on Connor, an Australian farmer whose three sons fought at
Gallipoli but never returned. He and his wife have assumed their sons are dead,
but while he was capable of retreating into his skill at farming, his wife,
unable to deal with the pain, has become a shell of her former self, asking
Connor to read to his sons as if they were still there. Eventually, she takes
her own life after which he promises to bring their sons home to her (and bury
them alongside her). He travels to Istanbul and stays in a hotel led by Ayshe
(Olga Kurylenko). From there, he not only develops a bond with her, but is also
aided by Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan) in his quest to find his sons.
For his first
directorial gig, Crowe certainly went big. While the sense of scale is
believable, there’s simply too much going on in this story. Despite the focus
on finding Connor’s sons, there’s also the political tensions between Britain,
Turkey and Greece, notions of love and marriage in Turkey, etc. They all never
coalesce into a satisfying whole, but rather exist awkwardly alongside each
other. This is particularly noticeable in the fil’s handling of the romance
between Connor and Ayshe. First of all, it feels completely artificial and
predictable. The moment they see each other, you know they’re ‘meant to be’ and
all that. Secondly, to give you an idea of how awkward the romance can get,
there’s a scene where they and her son splash each other with water…in bloody
slo-mo replete with happy orchestral music. Thirdly, and most importantly, it
lives awkwardly alongside the political backdrop. Nowhere is this more apparent
than the last seconds of the film. After Connor and Ayshe look at each other,
confirming their love and so on, the film fades to black and we’re greeted by
some text explaining how many have died at Gallipoli and so on…uhh, what?
There’s also the fact
that the romance includes a third party, a Turkish man who seeks to wed Ayshe
for honor and all that. This obviously devolves into a matter of marriage out
of duty vs marriage out of love. There’s a scene where the Turkish man slaps
her around and Connor interferes. But Ayshe tells him to back off, since it’s
none of his business. The metaphor is obvious: the West feels compelled to
interfere in other cultures when it perceives something going amiss. But the
film can’t leave it as obvious metaphor. Oh no, Connor has to say that he (aka
the West) was doing the right thing, whereupon Ayshe mockingly spouts that
Westerners always think they’re doing the right thing. It’s not that it isn’t
true, it’s just that it’s so obvious and in your face, you roll your eyes out
of embarrassment.
On the other hand, I do
like how the film adopts several Turkish points of view, those of Ayshe and
especially that of Major Hasan, played by a wonderful Yilmaz Erdogan. Even
though the film has nowhere near the time required to delve into all the
political ramifications of postwar Gallipoli, at least it shows more than just
the Western perspective.
The film starts out
well, but as time goes on and the scale gets bigger and bigger, things start to
feel underdeveloped and you stop caring, wondering when it’ll finally be over. There
are definitely worse directorial debuts out there though and I think that with
the right project, on a smaller scale with characters that are better
developed, Crowe can really come into his own as a director.
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