The Water Diviner

During my final semester at the community college, I chose to take a class on the World Wars as an elective.  I've been fascinated by World War 2 history since I was eight years old thanks to a preview for an Anne Frank movie I saw on TV.  But I didn't know a whole lot about World War 1 until I took that class.

That being said, my biggest criticism of textbooks is that they tend to focus only on famous battles and generals and that dude who took down the Ottoman Empire with a toothpick (that' s obviously an exaggeration).  Nobody learns about the farm boy who went to war and got hit by a grenade of the young pilot who lied about his age in order to get enlisted.  So when movies about lay peoples' war experiences come out, I get really excited.

Flash forward to April 2015.  My film school buddy came to class raving about a newer movie called The Water Diviner.  She wouldn't tell me much (she's not one to spoil movies for anyone), but she did say that there were war-related scenes and that they were not glossed over as so often happens in the movies.  So, in order to celebrate the end of a long (and slightly stressful) work week, I went and saw it.

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The Water Diviner is a bit of a deceptive title as hardly any of the movie has anything to do with actually finding water.  We get a scene at the beginning of the movie showing Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) finding water in the middle of the Australian wilderness.  Shortly after that we learn that Joshua has three sons who fought for the British Army during World War 1, all of whom never returned home and are presumed (keyword being "presumed") dead.  As a result of this, there is tension in the Connor household summed up when his wife cries, "You can find water, but you can't even find your own children."  This and a tragic event make Joshua set out on a quest to find them. After all, finding the remains of your three sons can't be that much harder than finding water in the bone-dry wilderness of Australia...can it?

Brits and Turks Agree to Help Each Other on Gallipoli
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Turks Help Joshua Find Arthur
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The movie is unique in that it is a splendid mixture of cultures as Joshua travels to Turkey, meets a Turkish widow, and crashes the army base at Gallipoli in search of his sons.  British/Australian Christians and Turkish Muslims work together to locate the remains of their troops lost in combat, and neither side is portrayed as the bad guy.  Both sides have suffered heavy casualties.  Both sides have dead who are unaccounted for, who lie in unmarked graves strewn across the Gallipoli battlefield.  The British ask for assistance from the Turks.  The leader of the Turkish army agrees to help Joshua find his sons.  Later, when they're captured by invading Greeks, the leader of the Turkish army saves Joshua's life by claiming that he is an Australian prisoner (and, therefore, an ally of the Greeks).  Joshua returns the favor by saving him from the Greeks who are going to execute him.

Henry, Arthur, and Edward at War
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At the same time, The Water Diviner is a tribute to family.  Joshua will stop at nothing to find his boys and bring them home (or what's left of them).  He risks bullets, bombs, the British Army, and angry Turkish brother-in-laws to find the place where they are thought to have died in battle.  On the same front, the brothers (depicted in a series of flashbacks) remain loyal through childhood and into the battle.  When a dust storm comes crashing down on them, they refuse to leave each other behind.  When one gets injured by a grenade, the others rush to his aid (which is how they got killed in the battle).

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Throughout the film, the closeness of the boys to their father (and their father's love for them) can be clearly seen in everything they do and say.  Flashbacks show a devoted father reading to his children from Arabian Nights, a scene which is mirrored as Joshua sits and reads the book beside Edward and Henry's graves in Gallipoli later in the film.  You already knew they were dead, didn't you?  It's in the preview.





Another thing which makes The Water Diviner unique is its depiction of war.  Many times, death in media is depicted quickly and relatively painlessly (with the exception of that kid who gets drilled in the head in American Sniper and every victim in every Saw movie ever made).  But, on average, war movies tend to do either one of two things: make us hate those whack-jobs who just want to kill innocent people overseas or make us want to join the army.  Most recently with American Sniper and now The Water Diviner, movies have finally started to be made that cast a more accurate light on war.  The reality is that war is ugly.  War is crawling around in mud with someone else's blood all over your face.  War is getting your arm blown off by a well-placed grenade and listening to your dying comrade moan for hours or days until they finally bleed to death.  Russell Crowe (who also directed the film) made sure that none of the horrors of Gallipoli were glossed over.  Henry's face is blown off by machine gun fire, and we see the wound in graphic detail in several flashbacks.  Edward's guts are practically hanging out, and we listen to him groan for at least five whole minutes before he finally dies (although it is implied that this scene takes place over a much longer period of time).  But he's not alone.  All around them, we hear the heart-wrenching moans of the dying -- other casualties left to die of their extensive wounds on Gallipoli.  It is truly horrific and hard to watch.  The Water Diviner knows that, and still refuses to shy away from it.

That being said, Edward's death is one of the most beautiful scenes in the film.  Please don't misunderstand, it's still horrific.  But even as he's dying on the battlefield, his relationship with his brothers is preserved.  He and Arthur (Henry died when his face was shot off) share old memories of things their father said and reference the Arabian Nights stories he used to read to them.  He begs Arthur to kill him -- he's dying anyway, why prolong the suffering when the result will be the same.  Arthur is resistant at first, but later pulls a bayonet over and does the hardest thing he'll probably ever do -- ends Edward's suffering.

I didn't even cry when Thorin died in Battle of Five Armies.  But I cried when Arthur pulled the trigger.

Despite it's hopelessness (as we spend at least half the movie believing that Arthur perished with his brothers at Gallipoli), the movie still gives us little rays of hope to cling to.  The color palette is full of vibrant color, everything from crystal blue seas to stunning orange sunsets.  My film school friend said it felt like the bright colors were symbolic of the hope in the story.  And when I thought about it, I had to agree with her.  Joshua never gives up hope that he will reach Gallipoli, find the remains of his children, and later find Arthur and bring him home.

These are the type of movies, and the type of scenes, that remind me why I want to be a filmmaker.

Other than the grotesque death sequences and the occasional bomb, gunshot, and slit throat, The Water Diviner is surprisingly clean.  Soldiers are shown bathing on the beach, some of whom are naked, but nothing graphic is shown.  A few uses of d---, h---, bastards, and a few others, but no f-bombs or misuses of Jesus' name.

Overall, definitely a movie worth watching!