A heartwarming, humane look at Gallipoli and wars in general

Rating: 9/10 (7 January 2015)

First of all I have to say that I am Turkish so you know my perspective. Though I am not a nationalist of any kind and oppose all sorts of militarism, violence and aggression. While I enjoy action films in general, deep down in my heart I have problems with many war films mainly because of their jingoistic, hateful, alienating, dehumanizing and polarizing approach. The most well- known examples I can think of are Saving Private Ryan and Lord of the Rings. I am very pleased that nowadays there are true anti-war films and was especially happy with 2014's Fury. I was also pleased with The Water Diviner for same reason but additionally found other aspects of the film great as well.
Very few negatives I can think of are the editing of the film, portrayal of Greeks and also ironically Turks. The film left an odd feeling of discontinuity. The scenes jumped from one to other and undermined the natural flow of the film. Nevertheless I don't want to blame Russell Crowe much because it is his debut. The Greek soldiers invading Anatolia were realistic. Their costume and makeup might be over the top but they did not come back to Anatolia for peaceful purposes for sure. Though because the film did not feature a positive Greek character at all, I felt this was unfair to Greeks because indeed Greek society contributed a lot to Ottoman society and they were still huge in numbers in Istanbul. Perhaps the presence of a couple of nice Greek people in Istanbul would change that image. Although great effort is put to display Turkish culture accurately, there were still several scenes which were historically wrong. I am sure women in Ottoman Empire were veiled but burka was never a part of Ottoman culture. It is an Afghan costume and as a secular Turk I am not pleased with that portrayal.
On the positives side, I liked the anti-war message most. The film intentionally fools you first by showing three brother heroically charging against Turks and winning the battle. When they are gunned down by machine gun fire later, that little heroism myth is revealed to be just nonsense. The scene is highly disturbing (as it needs to be) with one of brothers moaning in pain and the others face is blown away. Moreover I liked everyone's acting but special mention is to young Dylan Georgiades who played Ayshe's son. His chemistry with Russell Crowe was wonderful. The atmosphere in the film is very realistic. When watching, the film indeed took me to 1920's Anatolia and Australia and I remained there for 2 hours. There were nice small details put in the story and dialogues which enormously helped establishing that atmosphere.
Overall I really liked this film and look forward to see more films by Russell Crowe. I gave it a 9 because of some minor mistakes. It is a very well directed heartwarming anti-war drama.