A boy sets out on a quest to save his ill mother by searching for a mythic figure said to have magical healing powers.
David Oyelowo has given some fine performances throughout his career in such movies as “Selma,” “Captive,” “A United Kingdom,” and “Queen of Katwe.” While he appears in “The Water Man,” his main role is that of the film’s director, his big-screen directorial debut. He allows his young co-stars, Lonnie Chavis and Amiah Miller to take center stage while filling out the rest of the cast with heavyweights such as Rosario Dawson, Maria Bello, and Alfred Molina.
In an interview with Oyelowo on the Blu-ray, he stated that he was inspired to make “The Water Man” as a homage to the early films of Spielberg that he grew up watching and loving, like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.,” and it is evident throughout the entire 91-minute runtime.
Oyelowo plays Amos Boone, who along with his wife Mary (Rosario Dawson) and young son Gunner (Lonnie Chavis), moves away from the city to the small rural town of Pine Mills, Oregon and we discover, through Gunner’s eyes, that his mother is dying from Leukemia. His father Amos has just come back from serving overseas and they don’t get on well with each other, Amos being overprotective of Mary to the point of cutting Gunner out of important family conversations.
Gunner is mad that he can’t do anything about his mother’s illness, that is until he meets Jo (Amiah Miller), a young and feisty teenage girl that brags to all the local kids about having met The Water Man, and survived. According to the town’s mythology, The Water Man perished many years ago along with his wife, but his health regenerated because he found a bloodstone in the local mine that people say had the power to breathe new life into the dead. Gunner offers Jo money to help him find The Water Man as he feels the bloodstone could be the answer to saving his mother. Jo agrees and they head off on a journey fraught with danger that will take them into the darkest and most mysterious parts of the forest, where folklore dictates that the closer you get to discovering The Water Man, the more magical and mystical the forest becomes.
The movie serves as a metaphor for young children and how they can turn any situation, good or bad, into an adventure. Gunner writes graphic novels and occasionally, they come to life off the page as we see it from his perspective but the story also deals with child abuse, endangerment, and abandonment. Jo claims that the scar on her neck was from The Water Man but as the story unfolds, we realize it actually came from her abusive father. Gunner and Jo are two complete opposites but because they are young and naive, they have none of the trappings of everyday life that engulfs adults as most of them have already lost their inner child, and have forgotten how to be childlike and idealistic.
While Oyelowo, Dawson, Bello, and Molina are all fine in their respective roles, the film belongs squarely to our young protagonists. Watching the two gradually become friends and being able to confide in each other is what being a kid is all about. On their journey, they have a few moments of elation and laughter in which they momentarily forget about the horrors awaiting them back home and you find yourself wishing for more of these scenes, hoping Peter Pan would just come down from the sky and pick them up and take them away to Neverland so they could always be young and happy but sadly, real life seeps back in.
“The Water Man” most certainly takes cues from some of Spielberg’s earlier movies but where “Close Encounters” and “E.T.” made passing references to the imperfect home life in each story, Oyelowo’s presentation, at times, is a little more heavy-handed and in your face but at the same time, unlike Spielberg, who has a tendency to be a tad over-sentimental, Oyelowo admirably knows when to dial the emotions back. Thankfully, those scenes are far and few between and he allows us, for the most part, to watch Gunner and Jo’s friendship develop to where they eventually become inseparable from each other.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD August 17th
