One of the more frustrating aspects of mainstream war cinema is its tendency to focus on the during, with little attention given to the after. Even (American) films set immediately after wars tend to focus solely on the struggles of soldiers returning home.

“The Water Diviner” shines brightest when it meditates on the effects war has on those who would usually call the battlegrounds their homes. However, when it deviates too far from this, it loses its way a bit.

The story follows Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe, who also directed the film), a well digger in rural Australia just after the end of World War I. Things aren’t going so great for Connor, as his three soldier sons are all assumed to have been killed in the war, causing his despondent wife to take her own life.

Connor decides it is only right for his sons to be buried next to their mother and sets off for Turkey, where the boys were killed as part of the failed Gallipoli Campaign, when an allied invasion was pushed back by Ottoman forces after eight devastating months of fighting in 1915.

As Connor wanders through post-war Istanbul and Turkey, observing the forging of uneasy alliances between former enemies who are now tasked with picking up the pieces, “The Water Diviner” finds a rhythm.

It’s fascinating to see people try to restore normalcy after the largest, deadliest war the planet had ever seen up to that point. That war left a great deal of loose ends (there would eventually be a second one, after all), and seeing the residents of the former Ottoman Empire try to deal with the breaking up of their land is unique in mainstream cinema.

Connor’s story is emotionally resonant, as well. He’s a man who has absolutely nothing to live for except reuniting his fallen sons with their mother in a cemetery. His unwillingness to end this pursuit makes him sympathetic.

Unfortunately, the romantic subplot between Connor and Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), a Turkish woman who runs a hotel, weighs the film down. As a war widow, she’s an interesting character who shares something in common with Connor, but having the two implicitly fall in love feels needless and unnatural.

What’s worse is that it briefly goes into “white savior” territory as the film sort of frames their relationship as Connor rescuing her from a supposedly regressive society. It amounts to one scene, so maybe I’m overreacting, but it was enough to distract from the film’s positive aspects.

As an examination of the effects war can have on those who weren’t doing the fighting, “The Water Diviner” is successful enough to be worth seeing. However, it breaks from this too often with its awkward romantic machinations to be truly great.