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Jindabyne

Jindabyne is based upon the familiar short story "So Much Water So Close to Home" by iconic American author Raymond Carver. Carver was a master at writing sparse, thought-provoking stories featuring great tragedy mixed with everyday minutia. The story that inspires Jindabyne tells of a group of fishermen who discover the naked body of a murdered girl floating in a stream but choose to finish out their fishing trip as originally scheduled before heading down the mountain to inform the local authorities.

Gabriel Byrne stars as Stewart Kane "” the one who discovers the body "” an Irishman relocated to Australia. He once had a promising career as a stockcar racer but now owns a local petrol station. He dutifully provides for his wife, Claire (Laura Linney) and son Tom (Sean Rees-Wemyss) while dreaming of the one weekend a year in which he gets to go fishing with his buddies in the Jindabyne Mountains.

On the trip he is joined by the youthful Billy (Simon Stone), the silent Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and the cantankerous, alcoholic Carl (John Howard). The four are instantly transfixed by the beauty and tranquility of the river, so captivated that when they stumble across the dead body, they decide it would be best to tie her leg to a tree to prevent her from floating downstream and continue on their fishing expedition. When they do report her body at the conclusion of the weekend, they are greeted with disgust from the town locals for their heartless behavior.

This is not the first time that "So Much Water So Close to Home" has appeared in a cinematic permutation, as it was part of Robert Altman's three-hour compilation of nine of Carver's short stories and one of his poems entitled Short Cuts. Those who have seen Altman's grand 1993 film or read Carver's meticulous prose may suspect that viewing Jindabyne will feel nothing more than rote. It's a legitimate suspicion (and one that I myself had going into the screening) but as it turns out, screenwriter Beatrix Christian and director Ray Lawrence have turned the film into something completely of their own.

In many ways, Jindabyne could be taught to screenwriting students as a "how-to adapt a short story" module. Not only does the film manage to extrapolate a two hour movie from less than twenty pages of text with the same majesty that Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapted Brokeback Mountain, it also manages to transport the story's events and characters to the other side of the Earth without feeling blasphemous.

Shot on location in the real life town of Jyndabyne, (a popular snow resort in New South Wales), the landscape and town not only serve crucial visual roles but the

culture of the town is infused through all sorts of media, whether it's a song a character sings in her car or an educational video the children watch in their classroom.

Wisely, the film doesn't concern itself as much with the bickering and squabbling that the four men do upon discovery of the body (material covered extensively in the Altman version) but is much more interested in how the men and their significant others have to deal with the repercussions of not reporting their finding for the rest of their lives. As Claire becomes more and more self-righteous about the injustice served to the deceased, the film becomes much more of a morality play than the Carver text ever resembled.

Lawrence previously directed the similarly themed and Australian set Lantana in 2001. Much like Jindabyne, Lantana deals with two murders, one from the past and one in the present, both of which are being struggled with in incurable ways. His films have a remarkable sense of the uncanny about them. Reports indicate he only shoots using natural light and almost always does only one take of each shot but surprisingly his films never feel hurried or sloppy. Instead the naturalism of the performances and locations pervades producing quiet and lyrical films.

Jindabyne showcases a powerful ensemble of characters, all of which have much left unsaid about their characters by the end of the film. As the film contains relatively no exposition, the actors are required to convey a lot of the information about relationship through behavioral subtleties. When Stewart's mother Vanessa (Betty Lucas) comes to visit, the script doesn't need to spell out the tumultuous relationship she has with Claire, Linney's adept performance tells it all in a single look.

The audience learns the identity of the murder victim's killer in the opening scene (a chilling prologue and coda that might feel more at home in something like Wolf Creek) but the characters never do. Not that it would change anything. Being able to pin a face to the murderer wouldn't suddenly exonerate the four men's callousness in the mountains. Jindabyne is a film in which character's actions are taken to the test and no simple solutions will suffice. It may not be an easy film to like, but it is an important one to experience.

Movie Grade: B+

Synopsis:

Stewart Kane, an Irishman living in the Australian town of Jindabyne, is on a fishing trip in isolated hill country with three other men when they discover the body of a murdered girl in the river. Rather than return to the town immediately, they continue fishing and report their gruesome find days later. Stewart’s wife Claire is the last to find out. Deeply disturbed by her husband’s actions, her faith in her relationship with Stewart is shaken to the core. She wants to understand

and tries to make things right. In her determination to help the victim’s family Claire sets herself not only against her own family and friends but also those of the dead girl. Her marriage is taken to the brink and her peaceful life with Stewart and their young son hangs in the balance. The story of a murder and a marriage. A powerful and original film about the things that haunt us.