Day eighty-one: The Water Diviner (May, 29)

Today I remembered something from a Robin William's movie, The Final Cut, 2004: his character edits the chip that all humans have behind their eyes, capturing each moment of each one of us in Earth. The editing version is a sort of eulogy. After one of those, the deceased's brothers question him about the color of the family's boat. In the edited images, it is red, but he remembered it as green - something like that, because my memory is not so exact either.

No memory is, I think. "You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened", said John Green in An Abundance of Katherines. 

This quote could apply to me today. My mind played some tricks to me. For a reason that I'll never be able to point out, I thought the story in The Water Diviner was based in facts. And only because of that I gave a chance to the last Russel Crowell's movie - his directional debut on features, no less. Some films are interesting mostly by their biographic aspect, and we saw that last year with The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything (that I insist to remember as the theory of nothing...). But I was wrong, the story here is not based on facts, and so the whole reason for being there in front of this incredibly cheesy movie was lost by a shameless mind trick on myself. 

The movie is everything that I would thought and worse. Gratuitous and poor close-ups, lousy editing, terrible sound and dubbing(I don't know the difference between sound editing and sound mixing, but both are bad - no way something is saved from this mess), a wasteful use of soundtrack, cheesy romantic scenes, nonsense editing (I have to say this twice, because it is really bad). The plot is good, but that is all. The cinematography is not hideous as the rest (how ruin Turkish scenery?), but it is also not incredible to a point that would justify this whole hastily and stereotypied narrative. 

At some parts, I had to cover my face in shame. It was this bad for me. However, the ratings on imdb.com are good, so maybe it is just me being contrary once more. 

The Water Diviner. Directed by Russell Crowe. With: Russell Crowe,
Olga Kurylenko, Yilmaz Erdogan (His character is one of the few reassurances
in this film). Writer: Andrew Knight, Andrew Anastasios. Australia/US/Turkey,
2014,  111 min., Dolby Digital, Color (Cinema).

PS: Today's two fragments present Benedict Cumberbatch in different moments of his career. The less known one in Third Star, 2010, that looked awfull to me at first sight, but actually has good ratings on imdb.com. The other is more prominent, and I'm in front of it right now: Star Trek Into Darkness, 2013.