What a man! One minute was Russell Crowe as Joshua Connor in the Australian afternoon sun, the warm light shone in the sweat on his muscular upper arms. Connor came thanks to his divining rod in place the spade into the ground, raised his hand a pit, repaired them, continued to dig until he finally spluttered against the longed water and he could bathe in it under triumphalism. And now he is already sitting at the bedside of his three sons, and reads aloud the story of the magic carpet. “It’s the best moment of the day for you,” his wife had begged him at the dinner table. Such words can be a Joshua Connor not cold.
It does not take long, since one suspects already: A film that begins as “The promise of a life”, bends only very rarely back into calmer waters. And so betrayed the first minute almost everything about the directorial debut of Russell Crowe, who will not save in the following two hours from moving – sorry: his character – to the right light, by the way, seems so overpowering golden here that you have to almost assume all the scenes were shot in one go and with the same artificial illumination in front of the green screen. In a single moment even thunder may rumble and immediately pour a downpour, as it namely it is to identify on a battlefield corpses. So much meaningful use weather did not exist long. But from the front. It is the year 1915 in Europe rages on the First World War, and also the distant Australia caught between the diplomatic fronts. Fighting on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli soldiers from Down Under at the side of the British against the Ottoman army. And so it happens that even Joshua Connor, the virile farmer must let his three sons. Soon it said to be killed at the front. The mother can not bear the loss, Connor finds one day dead in the lake. At the grave he speaks his vow: He is the children bring back to their homeland – come what may.so gentle, so tight
What follows represents a proven principle: Loving father traveling in a foreign land, overcomes there all the bureaucratic and cultural resistances to fulfill his promise, and conquered by the way the hearts of his opponents. First, the Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan), who helps his erstwhile enemies grudgingly in finding the Fallen. On stubborn-headed Australian, he has quickly taken a fancy, as much paternal love is himself a man stirred nicknamed “The Barbarian”.
And then there’s Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), Beautiful and proud war widow with weakness for coffee grounds reading, Connor rented a hotel room in Constantine Opel. Initially resistant, it can be softened at once, when she learns of the fate of his three sons. Especially this bicyclic foreigners sometimes is so heartbreaking naive she asks the reputation of the muezzin with treuseligem view: “What sell there?”
Russell Crowe was born in New Zealand, he now lives in Australia. That he just now told his epic to the gentle as tight Connor with so much fervor, is no accident. On April 25, the landing of the oceanic forces jährte to Gallipoli for the hundredth time, in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga on the ANZAC Day is celebrated as a national holiday every year with military parades.
The collective memory of the dead makes a considerable contribution to the self-image of the nations of Australia, the battle on the rocky peninsula was the first as an independent federation of states, no longer as a British colony. More than 60,000 soldiers lost the country in World War I, nearly 9,000 of them died in the war grave of Gallipoli, which grueling eight months went. Allen remained nameless victims who could be buried only after the end of the war, now devotes Crowe by bracing his film. The directorial debut as a patriotic mission?
Nash, Noah, national epic
On the screen, the 51-year-old was already the Robin Hood, he played the math genius John Forbes Nash and Arkbuilder Noah. As Gladiator Maximus, he won even an Oscar. Maybe that can not pass without at one, maybe a figure like Joshua Connor the logical consequence of these heroes Gallery. Just hard to bear is in any case the tripe that unfolds here among Crowes Director and from a screenplay by Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight.
For instance, if Connor, under his fedora a kind wannabe Indiana Jones, the Ottomans enlightens: “Hope is essential, because where I come from.” If he reads again at sunset to the freshly shoveled graves of his sons out of the tale of the flying carpet. You have not even any war scene that is inflated by dramatic strings, feel as distasteful to keep “The promise of a lifetime” for great sentimental lard.
Whether in the end everything comes, the story culminates in a pathetic reunion with the surviving son and also a new love for Connor emerges, is at this point, of course not reveal. But predictably to that, it does not even need coffee grounds.
Watch the trailer for “The promise of life”
The promise of life
Original title: The Water Diviner
Australia, Turkey in 2014
Director: Russell Crowe
script: Andrew Knight, Andrew Anastasios
Cast: Russell Crowe, Olga Kurylenko, Yilmaz Erdogan, Cem Yilmaz, Jai Courtney, Ryan Corr, Ben O’Toole
production Hopscotch Features, Fear Films of God
rental: Universal Pictures Germany
Length: 111 minutes
From: May 7, 2015
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