The Water Diviner (2014)

THE WATER DIVINER  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Russell Crowe
    Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Yilmaz Erdogan,
    Cen Yilmaz, Jai Courtney, Jacqueline McKenzie
Russell Crowe's epic World War One movie, released exactly 100 years after the disastrous battle at Gallipoli. Crowe plays an Australian farmer named Connor, who's sent three sons off to fight in the Great War. They've all turned up missing, and all are presumed dead. Connor's wife blames him and she's gone mad, and when she dies an apparent suicide, he travels to Turkey after the Armistice, on an obsessive quest to locate and bring back the remains. It's a daunting task, complicated by the fact that the occupying Brits won't cooperate, the Turks hate the Brits, the Greeks and Turks are still at war with each other, and thousands of corpses lie buried where they fell, scattered over eight square miles. Crowe obviously has a passion for the story and an instinct for how to tell it. He knows his way around a movie camera, too. Some images, like the simple shot of masked mourners in a Turkish funeral procession, are likely to stay with you awhile. His flashback depictions of the battle are horrifying. There's no glory in any of it. After a day's fighting, night falls and the battlefield goes quiet, except for the despairing screams and moans of the not yet dead. That's a side of war the movies rarely show us. Crowe does. Even when his choices seem questionable, you can see why he made them. It leaves you hoping he gets to direct again. Water, coffee and the Arabian Nights figure prominently in the script.