As Russell Crowe's friend, mentor and five-time director Ridley Scott has said, the key to staying fresh is to do what you haven't done before. And so, like many an acting Oscar winner before him, Crowe has gone behind the lens to make his feature directorial debut. It shouldn't be a one-off - he does more things right than wrong with The Water Diviner.
Declaring himself a believer in Scott's theory that the best stories come from the truth, Crowe's debut is inspired by a real-life Australian father who travelled to Gallipoli after World War I to search for the remains of his sons. Penance, pilgrimage and the chance to heal combine as Crowe's grieving farmer Connor immerses himself in Turkish culture, meeting others who have lost loved ones in the war, and the soldiers who faced his boys across the trenches.
In terms of acting, The Water Diviner is powered by one of Crowe's most poignant performances, and watching him as the gruff but thoroughly decent Connor proves that the decades ahead should hold no fear for him - the good parts will still come. As a director, he has studied under some of the best (Scott, Ron Howard, Michael Mann and Peter Weir among them), recruited well behind the scenes (Peter Jackson's longtime cinematographer Andrew Lesnie does a beautiful job), gets the best out of his co-stars and keeps the pacing smart. This never feels like a vanity project.
The mistakes Crowe makes involve an over-reliance on slow motion to heighten the drama (it works the other way), a little too much sweetness in parts and a third act which relies too much on derring-do to bring us to the closing credits when the story was strong enough without such action and should have been kept low-key. His interviews to promote the film show he's old, wise and open enough to learn.
Indeed, despite all he's achieved, he's really just starting out again. It could be quite the journey.
Harry Guerin
