Beautiful film that explores wisps of hope found through countless tragedies

Rating: 9/10 (28 October 2019)

I try to watch as many movies as I can about war, so I added The Water Diviner to my watchlist as soon as it hit Netflix. A movie set after the action admittedly sounded like it risked being boring; however, this was anything but.
Russell Crowe plays a stoic, even docile father whose soft-spoken manner doesn't get in the way of his ambition to risk inconvenience, travel, and even injury and death to find the bodies of his sons lost in the Battle of Gallipoli. He knows their date of death and that they died together--nothing else. He travels to Turkey, meeting various characters who either help or hinder his efforts. Jai Courtney (an actor I've been seeing a lot lately who excels in historical roles) is interesting and demanding of attention here in the short time he's on screen. Olga Kurylenko gives a noteworthy performance as Ayshe, and Yilmaz Erdogan's character of Major Hasan was both layered and respectful.
The Water Diviner avoids over-dramatizing for the sake of Hollywood drama (save for the last shot of the film, though its inclusion was understandable after the gut-wrenching affair the rest of the film puts its audience through). One must give credit to the film for showing the nuance and various layers to all sides of the war and its participants. Major Hasan (at one point in the movie blamed for the deaths of the brothers) is a complex and interesting character that, in any other movie, could be portrayed as the simple "enemy". Instead, The Water Diviner strives to remain unbiased in terms of war and politics and remains focused on the human condition.
Action scenes are not scarce in the film, either. The movie actually opens up with one, though more are sprinkled throughout the film as both flashbacks of the Battle of Gallipoli and as new struggles Crowe has to get through as a foreigner in Turkey during a time of unrest. It's not as action-packed as some war movies given its subject matter, but regardless, The Water Diviner never bored me. It did make me tear up during one phenomenal scene showing the aftermath of a charge (men bleeding out, missing pieces of themselves, crying and groaning), and that's usually hard to do. I applaud this film for tearing through my heart like a meat grinder; the brutal realities of war are explored in full here, as is the devastating aftermath on the people the dead leave behind.
Overall, I loved The Water Diviner. Full of tragedy and the exploration of the human condition in two cultures on either side of a bloody divide, this was one hell of a movie. I recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in history or war and who can stomach its brutal realities.