David Oyelowo picked the perfect project, on a myriad of levels, to make his directorial debut. The Water Man features the Selma star and Rosario Dawson as a married couple with the smartest and wisest of sons, Gunner (Lonnie Chavis).
They have moved to a small town with hopes that a slower way of life can aid where science and doctors have failed. Dawson’s Mary has leukemia, and her prognosis is grim. It’s affecting the entire family, but most notably Gunner. He feels helpless, so when he hears of a local legend that involves healing the sick and reviving the dead, Gunner is emboldened.
The story of The Water Man is that the titular character was a happily married man when his town was first settled over a century and a half earlier. While working his job as a miner in the local mountain, he discovered a mesmerizingly intense gem. It was worthless to anyone with a vested interest in whatever came out of that mine but would prove priceless when the nearby dam broke late at night.
The tragedy would kill everyone in the small town. That is until the title character awoke after being pronounced dead, with that gem lodged in his shirt pocket. He would spend the next 150 years faithfully searching for his wife in the river (thus his name) and surrounding forest.
His story would become a legend and was passed on from parents to children to keep them out of the treacherous forest, supposedly. No adult genuinely believed the tale, except Alfred Molina’s mortician, Jim. He is in the family business that goes back generations. It was his grandfather who witnessed The Water Man’s miracle.
When Gunner first becomes aware of the tale, it is via a book he is lent by a local bookstore owner, who marvels at the boy’s intelligence and interest in a myriad of subject matters. It is that book that leads the tween to Molina’s mortuary. Jim gives Gunner a map of the region where the elusive and feared figure could be found but warns him that that forest is unforgiving, terrifying in fact.
Simultaneously, he meets Jo (Amiah Miller), who claims to not only have seen The Water Man but bears a scar on her neck from the encounter. She tells anyone willing to pay her story, and even for a price will take Gunner into the forest to find him.
Oyelowo plays Amos, an ex-marine who can be intense at times. One understands why, his wife is extremely ill, and he doesn’t quite “get” his son—what with his writing of graphic novels and the like. Sometimes his military background bleeds into his role as father and that is not what Gunner responds to, in fact, one night he yells at his son and it is the next day that the young man heads into the forest.
The Water Man reminds me of films such as E.T., The Goonies, and Escape to Witch Mountain—i.e., films that the entire family can experience. It has a completely different feel than any of those examples on a multitude of levels. First of all, it is more intense—the entire mom dying part is pretty heady—all without being too much for children who share an age range with Gunner and Jo, maybe even slightly younger, depending on your child. But then again, death is part of life and there is so much about The Water Man that just sits in that sweet spot of the old forgotten art that is the family film.
Chavis is a find. The young actor is tasked with, in many ways, carrying the film. He has to use the entire emotive actor’s toolbox and he does so in a way that makes it look easy, which of course it isn’t. Working with “kid” actors is reportedly a challenge—remember that old line about “never work with kids or animals?”—but Oyelowo, the director, has a rapport with Chavis that is pure gold. He allows the young man to act within the story that is required of him, but Chavis clearly made Gunner his own. The endearing nature he has towards his mother is often unspoken, something that cannot necessarily be “directed” or “coached” and the true star of The Water Man illustrates on every frame why he has the brightest of futures.
His onscreen magic with Miller is so brilliantly laid out over the course of the film by its novice director and equally as neophyte screenwriter Emma Needell. There’s so much to her Jo that is bread-crumbed to the viewer over the course of 90 minutes in a way that results in the richest of characters and one you just want to give a hug to, once all is said and done. Miller (you might recognize her from War for the Planet of the Apes) and Chavis are terrific together. What starts out as a collaboration of need (he, to get to the Water Man and her, to get money to continue to live on her own—away from her less than savory home life), blossoms organically. Miller too is a treasure, and she will also have many doors opened for her as her career progresses due to her immense talent.
Dawson, in many ways, is the heart of this entire endeavor. She may be sick and even dying, but she is the conscience of this family. When Gunner takes off to the woods, he doesn’t tell his parents, merely leaving a note for mom saying that what he finds will save her. At that point of the story, one sees exactly why the actress was cast by Oyelowo—besides having great chemistry with him. She cannot imagine what her illness is doing to her only child and the weight he is being asked to carry. Dawson achieves so much of that pain without saying a word. It’s equally as intense as it is heartbreaking and heartwarming.
What is always so striking about actors and actresses who direct for the first time, think Robin Wright with this year’s Land, is how these performers turn in such masterful performances… all while tasked with bringing a movie to life and all that entails. Oyelowo, who always blows us away—especially as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma—is so commanding, yet caring as Amos. The way he switches gears on a dime may be one of his greatest thespian traits. He’s asked to do that frequently in The Water Man and how he is able to achieve such acting greatness while directing with such precise precision is uncanny.
There is something else about The Water Man that is utterly striking. The location scouting team truly outdid themselves. Finding the right locale can be as challenging as casting directors’ and their charge of filling out an ensemble. It is not often something that is saluted in a review, but it has to be in this one.
As a director, Oyelowo makes quite an impression. Visually, storytelling-wise, to getting the most from his cast, the helmer has an innate gift. There are directors with decades of experience who still struggle with pacing and plot rollout. Yet Oyelowo takes just over 90 minutes to deliver a substantial story that has rich character development, several utterly thrilling sequences involving peril of the highest order and in the end, a beating heart of a cinematic experience that is as warm as it is bright.
Grade: A-