3

I just watched an interesting movie, The Water Diviner. There was an Australian man named Joshua who was on a mission to find his three sons lost to the first World War after his Wife Lizzie (Eliza) had commit suicide. He was told by a young Turkish woman named Ayshe to drink a cup of coffee before she could start a game that determines his fate somehow. Some weeks later he came back to see her, and he wondered why she didn't look surprised when seeing him. He asked her about it while she was giving him a cup of coffee. She answered

It was in your coffee, [..]. Everything is in the coffee.

Once he discovered what is inside the cup, he then stood up and they started to smile at one another.

What is the meaning of their last conversation before the movie ended? Did she make a "bad" coffee on purpose to test their hidden love; that is, a question about drinking in fear of making her sad and that he liked her? Or does it mean something else?

Improve this question
1
  • Not sure about these answers. At the end, there was a thick black gooey lump in the coffee. Nothing to say it was sugar, or that the coffee was sweet. He didn't even taste it. Could have been done better.
    – user22776
    Commented Jul 7, 2015 at 3:01

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
4

When you drink Turkish coffee, the coffee sediment that is at the bottom of the cup is used to predict/foreseen the future somehow (Turkish custom) :) so when the first time she served him a coffee she saw in the coffee sediment that he will return for her. That is the reason why she was not surprised. And also sweet coffee means that you like the person you served the coffee with.

Improve this answer
1
  • This is analogous to the slightly more Western idea of reading tea leaves. Different drink, different sediment, same idea that someone's future can be divined from the shape of the sediment in their drink.
    – Flater
    Commented Jul 3, 2017 at 10:30
3

I think the coffee had a lump of sugar in it. Earlier in the movie when they are discussing arranged marriages and how coffee determines a suitor, sweet coffee means the couple will marry.

Improve this answer
1
  • Thanks Harry! I was wondering that. I wouldn't have been able to sleep haha
    – user19861
    Commented Mar 22, 2015 at 12:14
3

I know the answer, I'm from Algeria, Jijel, we have the same traditions of turcs. When you want to marry a girl, you go to her house to her father and you demand her hand, she makes a coffee for you and your family. If there's no sugar in the coffee, they don't want you to marry her, but if the coffee was good, it means they accepted. :p

So in the movie, she puts much sugar to tell him that she wants him to stay. It means she doesn't refuse him.

Improve this answer
2

I think the answer is contained in the other posts, but there are some important details missing in them that make this scene extremely gratifying if you put all the clues together.

Earlier in the movie, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) tells Connor (Russell Crowe), as she was preparing the "game with the coffee", that the intended bride makes coffee for the visiting family. If it's sour, then go away. If it's sweet, she wants the intended groom for her husband. BUT, there is more to the "game", because she spins the cup, turns it upside down and waits a few moments before turning it over to interpret the signs. Ayshe looks, AND is surprised at what she sees as she then looks up at Connor. I say "game" because it's obvious Ayshe believes in the custom and what it foretells; so to her it's very much not a "game". At this point, she knows something that she does not overtly say.

At the end of the movie, Connor is surprised that Ayshe is not surprised to see him. But Ayshe knew he would return to her. She confirms this by saying: "It was in the coffee. Everything is in the coffee."

So here's the BIG surprise: Not only is there sugar in the coffee, it's almost filled with sugar. You could say that it was coffee in the sugar. This is her message to him that she is deeply in love with him. He stands and they smile at each other, confirming that they are both deeply in love with each other. Very, very well done as far as I'm concerned.

Another clue to her love: Earlier in the movie, she says that she judges a man by the way he loves his children. It was obvious that Connor loved his sons to the point of devoting his life to his search for them. She also sees the way Connor evokes friendship and love from her own son. I would love to believe this ending, as it just seemed it should be so!

Improve this answer
1

When Joshua attempts to drink the coffee that Ayshe has given him when he returns with his only living son Arthur after evading Greek troops. She gives him a coffee and he says thank-you and she goes to serve other people, he (Joshua) goes to drink it when he is held back by a lump of coffee in his liquid coffee.

Ayshe mentions when in the Dining room in the hotel with Joshua that the coffee must first be served by a young woman to a man who may have a chance together, the man then sips the coffee and the woman mixes it around. When the lid to the coffee mug/tea cup is removed, the amount of sugar in the coffee determines the amount of love a woman and man would fall to:

'The deeper the sugar, the deeper the love'

Ayshe states this when she introduces the legend to Joshua, she does this experiment herself and she is shocked to see that the sugar is very deep in the first coffee, this triggers a chain of events.

Meaning: The deeper the sugar, the deeper the love.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .