The Water Diviner. Rated M (mature themes and violence). 111 minutes. Directed by Russell Crowe. Screenplay by Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasios.
Verdict: A
terrifically assured directorial debut from Russell Crowe.
For his
directorial debut, Russell Crowe has wisely surrounded himself with the cream
of the crop when it comes to creative collaborators. In the perfect company of
production designer Chris Kennedy (The Road), editor Matt Villa (The Great Gatsby) and composer David Hirschfelder (The Railway Man, Shine), veteran,
Oscar®-winning cinematographer Andrew Lesnie (The Lord of the Rings, King Kong,
The Lovely Bones) beautifully accounts for the film’s visual ambition, which
leaves Crowe to bring a fine actor’s eye to the storytelling detail. And it is
a terrifically assured debut.
Joshua Connor
(Crowe) and his wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) are grieving the loss of their
three sons at Gallipoli. While Eliza remains trapped in an ultimately futile
charade, Connor copes by using his divining skills to build a well on their
property. When Eliza succumbs to the hopelessness of their situation, Connor
decides to travel to Turkey and bring his boys home so they can be buried next
to their mother.
The screenplay’s
finely wrought vignettes that make up the majority of Connor’s dedicated search
for his beloved sons combine to create an involving saga of one man’s
determination to re-unite his family. The shocking final battlefield sequence
involving Connor’s sons (led by a standout performance by Ryan Corr as Art), is
overwhelmingly powerful in its bruality and finality.
Having worked with
some of Hollywood’s most influential directors (most notably Ridley Scott for
Gladiator and Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind), Crowe’s directorial debut was
always going to be an intriguing experience. To his absolute credit, we
constantly find ourselves involved intimately in the characters’ journeys, with
his camera determined to bear reliable witness to not only the terror of war,
but the hope and optimism that love can bring to the ruins of a tragically
interrupted life.
This review was
commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
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