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JINDABYNE Send This Review to a Friend
When you combine excellent acting, a strong sense of place, an intriguing story and moral issues, as well as racial divides, there are rich ingredients for a powerful and involving film. Such is “Jindabyne,” a drama from Australia directed by Ray Lawrence from a screenplay by Beatrix Christian and starring accomplished Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne. What more information do you need to take a look?
Actually, there’s a lot more to boost interest in this work, including its history. The film is based Raymond Carver’s story “So Much Water So Close to Home,” which was also used by Robert Altman in “Short Cuts.” Now it has been moved geographically to a town in Australia, with the story opened up to encompass issues that have a particular meaning there. Much is packed into the tale that becomes revealing and involving in the context of its location.
Byrne plays Stewart, one of a group of male buddies who go on a fishing trip. While in a remote area, they discover the body of a young Aborigine woman who has been murdered. (We have seen her being pursued by a creep in a truck and then watched her brutalized body dumped in a lake.) Stewart is shaken at the discovery, as are the others, but why interrupt their long planned outing? Stewart ties her so she won’t float away, and the men wait another day before going back and reporting what they have found. This unleashes a torrent of reaction.
At home, Laura Linney as Claire is incredulous. Her emotions are shaky to begin with, as she has had a breakdown in the past after the birth of their son. But the whole issue of how men and women differ in attitudes surfaces. What if it were a man found instead of a woman? How could the guys be so insensitive? With the Aborigine community there’s the race issue. What if the woman had been white? Would she have been tied up and left while the men fished?
Claire is so upset by what happened that she wants to raise money among friends to help the family of the murdered—and raped—victim. But the Aborigine family wants no such help, and Claire’s reaching-out by showing up at a funeral service is unwelcome. The events bring a crisis in her marriage, as already existing issues are forced to the surface. There has been simmering tension between Claire and her meddling, judgmental mother-in-law. Claire has discovered something about herself that she is keeping secret.
There are also issues between Claire and her friends, and Stewart and his pals. There is a creepy relationship between two children in the mix. Over all of this hovers the way in which the film uses nature, accomplished with cinematography and by weaving it into the fabric of the story and the world of the Aborigines.
Perhaps there is too much going on, but each ingredient adds to the fascination with the characters, the conflicts, the moral and personal issues and the way in which a town is gripped by a particular event that has ramifications beyond the incident. Intriguingly, the film is unusual in that although a rape and murder occurs, the focus is not on catching the villain. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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