I wanted to stop by and thank everyone for their lovely birthday wishes, one and all. If I missed thanking someone, you can smack me later and if you are gorgeous (and female) then you can smack often... My beautiful bride turns 39 again on the 29th and I am looking forward to it very much too especially after she spoiled me so much over Christmas and my birthday. Gigi and I saw The Hobbit and the Water Diviner. Both were great and everyone pretty well knows the Hobbit saga, but I wanted all my friends to give the Water Diviner a chance over the coming months too. I was surprised at what a great job Russell Crowe does both in debut as director and in the lead role. In many ways, Russell reminds me of our great Jack Thompson in the way he plays this role. Many overseas people would not know of Jack Thompson, but he remains one of our iconic lead actors especially given the 70-80s when he was at his peak including Breaker Morant. Russell does not come across as a romantic lead, but in the way this movie unfolds, he shows he is capable of this type of role too. While the movie is based on a snippet from a journal, the way the story has been written gives it a whole new life, and one can only wonder at the original outcome of that letter. All the roles are well cast and the young boy is stunning. The war scenes are important, but are not gratuitous. They are more powerful by their understatement. What I really enjoyed was the fact that the story involves the Turkish people and their soldiers. As a teenager I spent many many months in a VA style hospital, and was lucky to meet dozens of WWI diggers as well as WWII, Korean War and Vietnam Was survivors too. I even got to chat to a man who served in the British Army in 1901. He could chat during the mornings, but would suffer sundowners syndrome by about 3pm. I learned a lot about life from these men. Although I was only fourteen and onwards at the time, these men would tell me stories that they had never shared with their families. Often there would be two or three of them in a group egging each other on, and reminding each other of various funny or not so funny stories they knew. In Gallipoli during WW! the Anzacs and Turks often sang together on special occasions. Of the four or five Gallipoli survivors I chatted to, i dont recall any of them saying anything bad about the Turkish soldiers unlike what quite a few soldiers would say about the Japanese soldiers during WWII and the Germans in both Wars. To Russells credit, the Turkish people and soldiers are shown probably more truthfully than in many other movies about this part of WWI. And as Jai Courtney says, there were horrible things done by both sides. And one has to remember that some of the earliest Concentration Camps were created by the British during the Boer Wars (Nothing like the Nazis, of course) but not something any Western person should feel proud of, either. I liked the balance he brought to the story and also a lot of attention to minor but interesting details. If anyone gets a bloody nose in this, it is the British!!! And I am sure there will be complaints about the actors portraying the Brits in the film. Probably better to look at this after the movie... imdb/title/tt3007512/board/nest/237677582 It is a fine multi-layered film and there are some new things brought to the table that I had not realised, like the way Greece atacking the dying Ottoman Empire, so soon after the Turks suffering untold numbers during WWI. Anyway, wherever you are, check it out and let me know what you think... I am sure we will get a lot of different replies... D :)
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 09:33:59 +0000
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