Released: December 2014 (Australia) and April 2015 (America)
Watched Netflix BluRay: February 2016
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Synopsis:
Four years after the Battle of Gallipoli, Australian farmer Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) travels to Turkey to find his three sons, who never returned home from the war. When he arrives in Istanbul, he meets others who have also suffered losses: hotelier Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her son, Orhan, who befriends Connor; and Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan), a Turkish officer who fought against Connor’s sons and now may be their father’s only hope in finding closure.
My thoughts:
My husband and I watched this on Saturday afternoon, Valentine’s Day weekend. I did not expect there to be a touching romance, but was pleasantly surprised to find one midst all the death Joshua persevered through in his search for his sons
I’m still on a quest to take in as much of the ‘Great War’ as I can during its centennial. Much of my reading for the past eighteen months has included several non-fiction and fiction titles about World War I. The most recent title I finished listening to last month was Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. The next BluRay from Netflix I have at home to watch, possibly this weekend, is the recently released Testament of Youth, which I hope is faithful to the excellent book I read last year of the same title.
The Water Diviner hit all the right buttons for me. Russell Crowe performed well, as usual, as did Olga and Erdogan as the Turikish Major. I did not realize until now, while writing this blog, that Crowe also directed the movie. Oh, and the boy who played Ayshe’s son was adorable and the perfect balm for Joshua’s grieving heart.
Filmed on location in Australia and Turkey, the only disappointing and disjointed scenes involved a locomotive later in the film. It was obviously computer generated and did not quite fit well within the surrounding landscape.
Both Terry and I enjoyed this movie and highly recommend you give it a chance and a couple of hours of your weekend.
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