After a long and celebrated career of award-winning acting performances, Russell Crowe moves into the director’s chair for the first time in The Water Diviner, and while it’s not a flawless start for the new filmmaker, it is certainly a respectable one.

The emotional film is set after the end of the First World War and tells the tragic tale of Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe), who is something of a psychic Australian farmer with the ability to locate water under the ground. As you may have guessed, his abilities are what earn him the Water Diviner title.

Joshua’s close-knit family meets tragedy when his three sons fail to return alongside thousands of other Australian and New Zealand soldiers after the unsuccessful Allied assault on the crumbling Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Joshua, who read stories from The Arabian Nights to his sons when they were young, misses them terribly. After his wife Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie) loses her battle with depression and commits suicide, Joshua heads off to Istanbul in an effort to retrieve their corpses and give them a burial.

Although the theme of the film is of special significance to Australian History, as director, Russell Crowe surprisingly examines the cruelties of war on both sides of the battlefield with equal empathy. The Water Diviner tells us that warfare is cruel to all involved, and shows that humanity can sometimes rise above the politics of battle.

Examining the cruelties of war on both sides of the battlefield

An example of this is Major Hasan (Yılmaz Erdoğan), the Turkish Officer who masterminded his nation’s defense against the assault from the Australian and New Zealand corps. Major Hasan is moved by Joshua’s mission and aids him in the search of his sons, “He is the only father who came looking.” Here, I especially found interesting the film’s observation of Turkish culture and the war’s impact on Turkish society.

Perhaps the weakest aspect of The Water Diviner is the romantic subplot between Joshua and Turkish war widow Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko). The relationship between Joshua and Ayshe is difficult to accept due to their age difference and their lack of chemistry. (Really Russell, you could be her father.) Olga Kurylenko, who is a talented actress, finds herself underutilised in a role that seems to have been written as an afterthought.

While it can be a challenge for an actor to direct himself, especially in an emotional historical epic, Russell Crowe does a serviceable job as a man nearly broken by feelings of anguish and guilt. But although the Australian actor is admirably understated during much of the film, he certainly brushes dangerously close to overacting during a couple of scenes. On the other hand, as an empathetic Turkish soldier, Yılmaz Erdoğan is very convincing in his role.

The Water Diviner particularly benefits from the work of its cinematographer, Andrew Lesnie, who you may recognise from his jaw-dropping work in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies. Here, his lens captures haunting scenes from the battle of Gallipoli where thousands of young men are laid to waste.

On the other end of the spectrum are gorgeous shots of the sublime Australian landscapes, beautiful moving pictures of Turkish mosques, and the wonderfully colourful streets of Istanbul which are teeming with activity. While the narrative isn’t always watertight, at the very least the film is divine to look at.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 3rd, 2015

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