“One old chap managed to get here from Australia looking for his son’s grave.”
That seemingly innocuous notation, found in a letter, became the catalyst for “The Water Diviner,” a sweeping drama of love and loss, hope and redemption that takes us from the scarred battlefield of Gallipoli to the arid Australian Outback to the teeming streets of Istanbul.
The unidentified “old chap” evolved into the central character of Joshua Connor-a grief-stricken father who, alone, travels thousands of miles to find the bodies of the sons he let go off to war and bring them home to rest. Russell Crowe not only stars in the role, but was so moved by the story he felt compelled for the first time to take the reins of a production. “In a strange way, ‘The Water Diviner’ chose me rather than me choosing it,” he recalls. “I had a visceral reaction to the script. I immediately began making notes, which is something I do as an actor, but this time was different. I wasn’t just making notes about my character; I was visualizing the whole film. I realized that, aside from the fact that I loved the story, I wanted to take responsibility for the entire project. It was not only what I saw on the page, but more importantly what I imagined in the shadows. I could see every part of it.”
Producer Keith Rodger, a longtime colleague of Crowe, attests, “Russell called me as soon as he finished the script and said, ‘This is it.’ He had goose bumps reading it and so did I. We had been looking at other projects but ‘The Water Diviner’ jumped right to the front. We dropped everything else and started planning.”
The enigmatic sentence about a devoted father’s search for his son’s remains had originally been discovered by screenwriter Andrew Anastasios while doing research for a documentary. It was in a correspondence from an ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) officer named Lieutenant Colonel Cyril Hughes-in command of the Graves Registration Unit in post-war Gallipoli-to renowned Australian author and historian C.E.W. Bean.
Anastasios offers, “The line hit me like a thunderbolt; it posed so many tantalizing questions: Who was that father? What made him get on a boat and sail all the way to Turkey? What happened to his son? I showed it to my friend and co-writer Andrew Knight, and he agreed that we should try to tell this man’s story. We researched for a year and a half and couldn’t find out anything more about this mystery father, so we sat down and conceived his story.”
Anastasios and Knight decided to imbue Joshua Connor with a special quality, making him a water diviner, someone who can discern where water might be hiding beneath even the most barren landscape. “We wanted him to have all the qualities we admire: resilience, compassion and courage,” says Anastasios. “But we also wanted to add an unexpected dimension to the character that sets him apart; we wanted him to have a special gift that was both engaging and curious.”
The writing duo based that aspect of the character on Anastasios’s own grandfather, who was a real water diviner in the countryside of New South Wales. Interestingly, Crowe reveals that he had his own familial link to the role. “It probably meant more to me than the next man because I’ve seen my own dad do this. He had that skill, so it was a personal thing for me when I read the script. Part of it is studying the topography of the land and looking for signs of water movement, for where rain might have seeped through fissures in the ground and then pooled in aquifers below the surface.”
However, the filmmakers agree that practical applications are only a small part of Connor’s abilities. Anastasios asserts, “The special connection Connor has is not just with the elements but with his sons. He is tied to them by love and by blood. The blood in his veins is the same as that in his sons’ and he senses it in the same way he divines for water, the lifeblood of the earth. Call it gut instinct or parents’ intuition…he can feel their presence.”
Russell Crowe adds, “Intuition is powerful and it’s real, and is something every single person uses at some point in their lives. I’m talking about the pure intuitive force that leads you in life to take a step in one direction or another. So it was no stretch for me to imagine that a man like Connor, given the depth of the bond he has with his kids, would get a physical sensation when he is looking for the bones of his children, like he does from water.”
The drama not only resonated with Crowe as a father of sons himself but also as an Australian who was raised on the horror and heroism of Gallipoli. “I would definitely say the fact that I’m a dad myself influenced the way I felt about the script,” says Crowe, “because, as every parent knows, as soon as you have children it affects everything in your life, every decision you make. I think that theme is universal. People everywhere can understand what would drive Connor to search for his sons.”
Perhaps less universal is the backdrop of Gallipoli. Producer Andrew Mason admits, “The history of the battle is little known in the States-in fact, America hadn’t even entered the war at that point-but Gallipoli is as indelible to Australians and New Zealanders as Gettysburg or Normandy to Americans. It might seem odd for us to commemorate what was ultimately a defeat, but it was a campaign marked by spectacular courage, as well as terrible losses.”
“That is why Gallipoli is revered in the way it is,” adds Crowe, “because the fighting was fierce and it was a killing field; thousands of young Australians and New Zealanders lost their lives in that place. And every year on the 25th of April-the anniversary of the landing-we memorialize their sacrifice on Anzac Day. It is a cornerstone of our cultural identity.”
“The Water Diviner” is primarily set in the aftermath of the war when, Rodger notes, “in most cases, the families left behind never knew exactly what had happened to their loved ones, how they had died or where they were buried.”
Members of the Anzac forces returned to the Turkish peninsula to locate their fallen comrades. The task, however grim, also proved to be an opportunity for reconciliation between former enemies. Mason explains, “There was a real need to go back and try to identify the dead and properly mark their graves. And there was a spirit of cooperation between the Turks and the Allies to do that together, which is depicted in our film.”
Crowe acknowledges that “The Water Diviner” provided him a view of Gallipoli he had never considered. “Reading the script, I came to the realization that I’d never given a minute’s consideration to the other side of the story. Not once did I think about it from the Turkish standpoint. What we call Gallipoli, they call Çanakkale, and they lost exponentially more men than we did.”
The Turkish perspective is seen through various characters who help Joshua Connor on his journey. They include Ayshe, a widowed hotel owner, played by Olga Kurylenko; Major Hasan and Sergeant Jemal, two veterans of the brutal battle, played by Turkish actors Yilmaz Erdogan and Cem Yilmaz, respectively; and Orhan, Ayshe’s young son, who befriends Joshua.
Though most of the filming on “The Water Diviner” was accomplished in Australia, portions of the movie were also shot on location in Turkey. In the bustling city of Istanbul, it was the first international motion picture ever given permission to shoot inside the breathtaking Blue Mosque.
As Joshua travels through a country that had only a few years earlier been at war with his country, “he never finds the footsteps of the enemy,” Crowe comments. “Instead, he finds more than he could ever have hoped for. One of the things that comes out of this film is that there are two sides to every conflict, which is something that excited me about the script. I think after 100 years there has been enough time that we can open our hearts and our understanding of what the situation was from both sides.”
An extraordinary tale of love, faith and heroism, “The Water Diviner” will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas nationwide starting June 24.