Jindabyne

Jindabyne is in the southeast corner of New South Wales, Australia. A disturbed man kills a young aboriginal woman. Stewart Kane (Gabriel Byrne) and Claire (Laura Linney) have issues in their marriage. Stewart goes on a fishing trip with his friends Carl, Rocco, and Billy. Stewart finds the dead woman's body near their campsite. The men decide to continue fishing for the rest of the weekend.

The movie is trying to include a lot of stuff. The best that I can distill this into is a moral decay and callousness. Stewart and Claire are struggling with a loss that has sapped their joy. She discovers that she's pregnant. The crazy man ranting about electricity just adds to the generalized sense of unease along with the constant haunting music. It starts as an eerie murder mystery. If there is any scene that could galvanize the entire movie, it is Stewart discovering the body. The movie needs to spend more time with the four men discussing what to do. This movie needs clarity. The characters leave a lot unsaid which is frustrating. It's also a missed opportunity. Later, the movie tries to play the race card. In order for that to work, it needs to be set up better. For non-locals, it can come out of nowhere. This movie needs to concentrate on the primary issue and focus on it. Maybe the movie should start with the fishing trip first. It also brings back the crazy man which leaves the movie ending unsatisfying. This movie has a lot to say. It may be too much.

This is an intriguing, evocative and multilayered film superbly acted and wonderfully filmed (mostly in single takes, it seems). It is also rather slow and meandering, and problematic. The basic plot could be set almost anywhere – failure of personal relationships in the context of a failure of civic duty, but Ray Lawrence has chosen to adapt Raymond Carver's short story of the fishermen who took their time over reporting finding a woman's body to a highly specific place, Jindabyne, NSW, and to include the vexed question of black/white relationships in Australia.

As is pointed out in one of those awful cheery 1960s documentary being shown to the kids in the local primary school, the present day Jindabyne is a "second chance" sort of place, the old town having disappeared under the waters of Lake Jindabyne during the creation of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme, though at very low water levels the old church steeple is said to poke out of the water. Unfortunately, as we are shown in the opening sequence there is still evil in the new town in the shape of the local electrician (Chris Heywood, very nasty), who likes to hunt and kill young women. It is his victim's body the four fishing buddies, Stewart, Carl, Rocco and Billy, find in the stream, tie to a log, fish for a day, and then the next morning decide to raise the alarm.

When it becomes public that the four delayed reporting their find to go fishing (why didn't they lie about when they found the body?) there is a predictable uproar. The dead woman was aboriginal and the local aboriginals are particularly upset since they see this as symptomatic of whitey attitudes). Rocco's aboriginal girlfriend is not impressed. But the greatest emotional impact falls on Stewart (an Irishman) and his American wife Claire whose relationship is already rocky.

At one point I thought Claire was going to crack the case, but instead we get a literally hazy scene where some kind of reconciliation between black and white is attempted. After seeing the superb "Ten Canoes" recently I found the whole aboriginal storyline contrived. What I did think was very powerful and affecting was the portrayal of a damaged marriage. Gabriel Byrne does not put a foot wrong as Stewart, an ordinary bloke resigned to what little emotional comfort he can get from his family, and Laura Linney gives great depth to her role as his wife Claire, a woman for whom motherhood is a daunting task.

The rest of the cast are fine. Debra-Lee Furness as Carl's wife Jude makes a dislikeable character understandable, John Howard as Carl puts in a solid performance and there are two good performances from child actors Eva Lazzaro as Jude's disturbed granddaughter, and Sean Rees-Wemyss as Stewart and Claire's son Tom.

Ray Lawrence clearly did not set out to create a crime story but he certainly shows that crime can have some unexpected collateral damage. He also has contributed to the "Cinema of Unease", a phrase Sam Neill once used to describe New Zealand cinema, by setting a story about personal and public guilt in such a glorious setting.

With no fault to the actors (they all put on great performances), the overall story was not very well executed. The movie opens with a great zinger: a crazy old guy forces a young Aborigine girl's car off the road. But then, we're forced to endure 40 minutes of character development with an entirely new group of characters ... and we don't know why until the 40 minutes are up. It turns out that they are the ones who eventually discover the girl's body ... and the story progresses from there.

While the story does pick up at that point, it really goes nowhere. After 2 hours, I asked myself: was there a point to this, or was it just to see the characters struggle with accusations of racism and stupidity of how they handled the discovery? The story was ultimately unsatisfying and felt unfinished. While it is well acted, there's not a strong enough backbone in the film to warrant recommending it.

In the Australian town of Jindabyne, the former race champion Stewart Kane (Gabriel Byrne) works in a gas station with his partners and friends Carl (John Howard), Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and Billy (Simon Stone). His impassionate marriage with the unstable Claire (Laura Linney) has an unresolved issue since Claire left him when their son Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss) was born. The great passion of Stewart is fishing and he organizes a weekend fishing trip in a remote river with his three great friends. On Friday afternoon, they park the car and hike and camp in the spot; while fishing, Stewart finds the naked dead body of an aboriginal young woman floating on the cold water. Stewart ties the leg of the woman to an arbor and they spend the weekend fishing. On Sunday afternoon, they return to the parking area and report their finding to the police. When the press releases the information, their public and private lives are deeply affected and the disturbed Claire questions Stewart's attitude while trying to help and apologize with the family of the dead aborigine.

"Jindabyne" has a storyline of great potential, with a morbid and polemic study of moral aspects of human (and consequently flawed) characters. Unfortunately the screenplay is not good and looses the focus of the main storyline entwined with many parallel and unresolved plots of supporting characters. Why Caylin-Calandria has such weird and morbid behavior? (It seems that because of the death of her mother, but it is never clear). The character of the old man that killed the aborigine is not developed. Why Claire became dysfunctional with the birth of her son? Why Stewart is still married with Claire? The attitude of Claire against her husband is annoying and in Brazil we have a saying that states "with a friend (or in this case wife) like that, Stewart does not need enemies". Anyway, the locations in Australia are stunning, the cast has great acting and it is worth watching this movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

This is a 'typical' Ray Lawrence film. Similar in its dark view of the world, to his earlier 'Lantana'. The same slow, deliberate, menacing pace, drawing out evil in every corner ("shades of David Lynch's Twin Peaks" here). Our good ol' boy Aussies (one a transplanted Irish), on a weekend trout fishing trip away from their wives, 'park' the corpse of a murdered woman they discover floating in their stream. They continue with their fishing, not reporting the find until leaving the site - for which they are intensively and unremittingly attacked by all and sundry on their return. The fact that the dead woman is an Australian Aboriginal person adds to the 'political' impact of their offense. Through all this, the real serial killer (who we see from the first scene) hovers menacingly nearby.

An interesting, if somewhat cynical, view of the highly charged inter-racial atmosphere in the Australian community: white guilt and 'political correctness'. Who are the real villains here? Our 'politically incorrect' (and morally vacuous) protagonists? Or the murderer? Accoring to Lawrence, the former, apparently.

Taught and tense throughout, the film lacks a real resolution, opting instead for a rather 'weak' ending through the redemption of the fishers.