Period Drama Challenge - The Water Diviner, A Review

Second review for the Period Drama Challenge with Miss Laurie at Old Fashioned Charm.

Before I get to The Water Diviner though, I would like to mention another movie I watched last night, Love and Mercy. What a fantastic movie! And I never even knew it had happened. It is about Brian Wilson, the leader of The Beach Boys, and his life in the 1980s as he is being overmedicated and controlled by his psychotherapist. It was shocking to me that this occurred.
Paul Dano was fantastic as the young Brian Wilson.

I've got a bit off-track, but I just wanted to mention this movie. And The Beach Boys 'God Only Knows' has to be my favourite song ever!

OK, back to the Period Drama!
The Water Diviner is set in Australia and Turkey in 1919, with flashbacks to the battle of Lone Pine (August 7, 1915)  when all three sons died in the same battle. Their father (Russell Crowe) is determined to travel to Turkey and use his skills as a water diviner to determine where their bodies are.

This movie will definitely make you cry, no doubt. The war scenes were harrowing and brilliantly acted. From my previous review, you will know how much I admire Ryan Corr's acting and he is simply amazing here as the older brother who cannot 'look after' his younger brothers as he promised his parents he would.

I found the whole story so interesting. It is very loosely based on a true story - apparently there was one father who travelled to Gallipoli to find his sons after the war.

I'll leave you to decide whether the ending was believable. To be honest, I'm still not sure whether I liked it or whether the movie needed it.

I wasn't particularly taken with the story of the father and the relationship he formed with a young Turkish woman. I found it slightly insulting, as though she needed rescuing by a Westerner. Does that make sense? It seemed just a bit too cliché for me.

But overall, wonderful movie. Ryan Corr, and James Fraser and Ben O'Toole, as the three brothers definitely made the movie. Worth watching, if only to remind us of the horrors of war in the hope that such atrocities can be avoided. If only humans could live in peace - I would like to think that isn't too naïve a feeling to have.