The Water Diviner

When I was fourteen, my bedroom was in the basement just off the family room where the TV was located.  I have always had a difficult time going to sleep so I would often sneak into the family room late at night to watch movies on cable.  One night an obscure Australian film called Gallipoli was on HBO.  It stars a very young Mel Gibson just on the cusp of stardom and I was immediately enthralled by the story of two mates caught up in the excitement of running off to war only to find themselves in the middle of a futile battle with Turkey over the Gallipoli Peninsula during World War I.  In my opinion, it is director Peter Weir's masterpiece.  I watched it every time it was shown on HBO (usually late at night) and I eventually had a friend who worked at Blockbuster Video special order a copy for me.  Fourteen is a rather impressionable age, I grant you, but no movie has ever been able to equal the emotional impact that Gallipoli had on me then or continues to have on me today.  I have yet to watch it without crying in certain scenes nor can I listen to Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor (used in a pivotal scene) without tearing up.  When I saw a preview for The Water Diviner, I knew immediately that I would have to see it (which I did last night) because it deals with the same subject matter.  While Gallipoli culminates in a dramatic scene from the battle, The Water Diviner begins in the trenches and depicts the aftermath.  Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) is an Australian water diviner who to travels to Turkey four years after World War I to reclaim the bodies of his three sons who were killed at Gallipoli.  While in Turkey, he meets with much resistance from the British but is ultimately aided by a Turkish officer named Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan).  Crowe, in his directorial debut, definitely takes great pains to emphasize that the Turks had just as many casualties as the ANZAC forces and the anti-war theme really resonated with me.  I found the battle scenes, shown as flashbacks, to be incredibly affecting.  However, I didn't particularly like Connor's romance with a Turkish woman (Olga Kurylenko) or his adventures through Istanbul with her son (Dylan Georgiades).  To me, this entirely superfluous storyline lessened the impact; a father looking for the bodies of his lost sons in a country still ravaged by war is compelling enough without adding familiar plot devices meant to appeal to a wider audience.  The Water Diviner is a good movie but it isn't great (although it could have been).  For true greatness, try to find a copy of Gallipoli.