Russell Crowe's ANZAC story
For the first time, Russell Crowe is taking the director’s chair for a story he is intent on telling his way — the story of an Australian father who goes to Turkey to bring home the bones of his three sons who never returned from Gallipoli.
The Water Diviner is unlike any other project he has undertaken, and for that reason Crowe decided to not only star in and direct the film, but also document its making.
"The thing that resounded with me when I first read the script was the Turkish perspective," Crowe says in his special piece for Sunday Night.
"Right from the first reading I knew I was having a response to the script that was different. Yes I could see the character clearly; yes I was making notes on behalf of the character. But I was actually visualizing the entire story as I read it."
The screenplay is by Australian writers Andrew Knight and Andrew Anastasio. It was written after they discovered a letter mentioning a man who’d traveled to Gallipoli four years after the war.
"(The letter) was from a man called Cyril Hughes of the imperial war graves unit. And in that letter there was this intriguing line. A line that exploded in the imaginations of the writers. It became a script," Crowe said.
One old chap managed to get here from Australia, Looking for his son's grave.
Crowe reveals how this discovery led to the formation of a story that was about much more than war and loss…
"The Water Diviner is an epic, brutal, romantic, heart-wrenching and inspiring adventure of discovery that proves what lies beyond good and evil is love."
So how did Russell find his first role in the director's chair?
Watch the video above to find out.
