A triumph for Russell Crowe in his directing debut

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2015)

Russell Crowe, who also directed (this is his debut at the helm), plays Connor, an Australian farmer whose specialty is finding water beneath the land – thus the title. His three sons have died in 1915's battle of Gallipolli, and after his distraught wife commits suicide, he decides to go to Turkey to recover their bones or at least to know their fate. We are now in 1919, the First World War has just ended, but not for Turkey, who has seen its capital Constantinople occupied by Western forces, while its Aegean coast have been invaded by Greece (Greeks are the bad guys in this movie, in one scene they are shown killing defenseless Turkish villagers and in another they treacherously attack Turkish patriots on a train). The English forces are lukewarm to Connor in his quest for his son's remains, but he finds an unlikely help in a Turkish major (played with dignity by Yilmaz Erdogan) who fought on the other side in the battle and thus has a good idea of the circumstances of the deaths of Connor's sons. While in Constantinople, Connor finds lodging in a nice boutique hotel run by the beautiful Ayshe (played believably by the Ukrainian model Olga Kurylenko), whose Turkish husband, we eventually learn, has also presumably died in Gallipolli. Connor and Ayshe starts getting close to each other, though no doubt in deference to Turkish sensibilities, the relationship between Connor and Ayshe is never shown as consummated (and frankly, given the conservatism at the time of Turkish society, would it have been believable for an Australian national to have a romantic relationship with an Ottoman woman during this period?)
The movie is not perfect, but it has many praiseworthy aspects, including a wonderful photography and a careful reconstruction of Constantinople, down to the crowded, narrow streets where veiled women and men in their traditional Turkish hats hassled. The film does hit at least a couple of false notes: one particular scene, that I found jarring, has the Crowe character and Ayshe's brother in law (who wishes to marry her and occupy his late brother's place) get into a fist fight over her. The other scene that I did not like, which I won't reveal in detail, appears near the end and it has to do with the ultimate resolution of Connor's quest for his sons. But despite these particular shortcomings, this is an accomplished debut by Crowe.