The scene opens on a man, Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe), traversing the hot arid plain of Australia’s Outback. The camera looks down from above, almost as if it were the face of God. He carries two small metal rods in front of him, holding them gently and respectfully, as he might hold the reins of a pair of fine horses, giving them their head. Suddenly the rods cross. X marks the spot. He throws down his tools and begins to dig.
It is backbreaking work. We know from the change in his clothing that it takes many days. But he never gives up. He knows the water is down there; the rods told him so. He just has to keep digging. And sure enough, the water finally begins to gush. He exults at the sky as the water reaches his face, almost as a baptism. He has found water in the midst of a vast desert, just by trusting his gift for divination.
Arriving home, he finds his wife Lizzie (Jacqueline McKenzie) busy cleaning the boots of one of their sons. “They’re waiting for their story,” she tells him, nodding toward the bedroom of their three boys. “Not tonight,” he pleads. “I’m bone tired.” But she insists. “It’s their favorite part of the day.” The camera stays on her as we hear him read a magical tale from the Arabian Nights. The camera peers over his shoulder at the story’s illustration, then pans out.
How could you send all your sons off to fight a war half a world away? For what? For honor? For nothing.
But the beds are empty. There are no blankets on the striped ticking of the mattresses. These boys have been gone for a long time. They fought at Gallipoli. “May you outlive your children” may sound like a blessing, but it is the greatest curse any parent can know.
Moments like this abound in Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner, his first film as a director and a stunning piece of work. It is a film so filled with passion and pathos, elegant cinematography and quotable lines, that you just know — this is the film Crowe has held in his heart through all the years of making other people’s films. It is his paean to the Aussies and Kiwis who joined the ANZAC forces to fight the Turks during World War I while simultaneously offering a heartbreaking protest against war. As we watch him send his fine sons off to war in a flashback scene, calling out to the oldest, “Keep your brothers safe!”, we can’t help of Wilfred Owen’s ironic and contemptuous poem about the sufferings of soldiers in WWI: “Dulce et Decorum Est” — “Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.” No, it is neither sweet nor fitting. It is horrifying. How could you send all your sons off to fight a war half a world away? For what? For honor? For nothing.
“You can find water, but you can’t find your own sons,” Lizzie accuses Connor wretchedly, and so he heads off to Gallipoli to find his sons’ bodies and bring them home. Along the way he stays at the inn of a woman (Olga Kurylenko) whose Turkish husband was killed in the war and meets the Turkish commander (Yilmaz Erdogan) who oversaw the ANZAC defeat at Gallipoli — his sons’ defeat — and has now returned to help the victors find and bury their dead. One Turk says to a British soldier, when asked what he did before the war, “I was an architect.” The Brit replies, “I was a civil engineer.” Enmity turns to respect as they come to know each other, and aThomas Hardy poem comes to mind — “The Man He Killed”:
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.
Despite the excruciating sadness of its subject, The Water Diviner is one of the most beautiful films I have seen in recent years. The powerful love of a father for his sons is demonstrated in the flashbacks and mingles with the terrible guilt he feels as he realizes what he has unwittingly done to them by proudly sending them off to war. The cinematography is lush and creative, the music poignant, and the script is so carefully crafted that it reminds me of an Oscar Wilde play, full of pithy, quotable truths. This a film you will be glad you saw.
