Jindabyne (2007)

Pretty Good

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I'm not quite sure even now how I feel about this movie. I wanted to like it because, as an Australian, I believe that Australia has a very high success rate in making movies that are variously worthy, interesting or, oftentimes, just plain funny.The name of this movie was I admit a particular attraction for me personally because I know Jindabyne the town so very well. But, I admit that I didn't really know too much about the movie when I recently bought the DVD.Certainly, for me it was interesting to see so many familiar places in and around Jindabyne. But, like many others who have reviewed here, I found the movie annoying at times and ultimately a bit dreary. I cared very little at all about any of the characters, least of all about the kid with quite possibly the most stupid name in all of film history. I speak here of Caylin-Calandria.The thing that really offended me the most though, as I'm sure it offended a great majority of white Australians who might have seen it, was the lecturing tone that had at its heart the centuries old grievances of the Aboriginal part of Australian society against the white Australian population. "They done us wrong", "someone has to pay", "don't celebrate Australia Day because it offends us", "don't pretend to be sympathetic (Claire) when you're a whitey and you just don't understand anything". I detest being lectured about morals in any movie and I make no exception for this one.I would have thought that any modern day civilized people might have been even a little bit open to Claire's overture to the Aboriginal people who lost one of their community. We white Australians are not racists simply because we enjoy all that Australia has to offer us in return for hard work and commitment to a modern society. Most white Australians would wish that everything were equal for whites and for Aboriginals. The fact is that the very great majority of white Australians are not racists these days. Just try to get over past hurts and become engaged members of society. That's the point that really needed to be made in this movie.Having said that, I quite agree with what many others have said here that it was absolutely inexplicable why a group of four guys finds a woman's semi-naked body (any woman's semi-naked body regardless of ethnic background) in a river and doesn't do what so blindingly obviously need to be done; reporting it quickly to Police rather than tying up the body and having a jolly old time fishing in the very same waters.I must end here by saying that I was offended by the final scene of the movie with so little lack of tolerance for the white lady who came to pay respects at the Aboriginal ceremony. I was even more offended by the interminable Whitney Houston type wailing of a song the deceased woman allegedly wrote before she died.This is not a movie I plan to watch again any time soon.

Apparently 'Jindabyne' is the story of how the monumentally stupid behavior of four Australian good buddies (not reporting the discovery of a body until they've finished fishing, and then letting on that they did so) brings the racial conflicts of an Australian town and emotional conflicts of its families to the surface.The problem with the film is that not one of the characters is written as anything but a stereotype. Not a single one of them has a need that the audience can understand - you're left to assume their motivation from the cliché they are drawn from. It's sheer bad writing - each main character has to have some sort of major drama going on, because their characters are so thin. That's melodrama, and the cast chew the Australian scenery like they haven't eaten in a week, and the full-on ethnic wailing on the soundtrack gets old very quickly.The consequence of having so many threads of melodrama is that not one of them is resolved. The movie tries to cover up its lack of proper characterization by resorting to an unnecessary and unresolved serial killer plot, and a paper-thin small-town racism plot.Nobody on the crew thought to mention that if you find a dead body in a creek, you might not feel like eating the fish you pull out of there. Bad writing and sloppy film-making.

This films stirs up those nagging thoughts anchored in feelings about our place in the world. One single failure to do the right thing can be what defines who you are in the eyes of those who live in your community who have hardly shared a few informal greetings. Worse, those who know you best feel badly let down by a single act that really can't be understood by you or them. We all hope that it is an act of heroism that might be our legacy.This film has a casual greatness. It grinds out the message in an almost documentary style about the unwillingness of the protagonists to confront themselves and the resulting fallout on those around them. There is no Hollywood "closure" here for the victim's family. I may never watch this film again, so many scenes hit hard, or stir up those feelings that we are loath to acknowledge, but I urge you to watch it. It really does go places that few movies take you.A final word. I can't think of a more courageous actress than Laura Linney, who has taken that lonely road of tackling truly difficult parts in one project after another with gritty integrity and intelligence.

"Jindabyne" (pronounced JIN-da-bine) is a 2006 film about a crisis in an Australian town. Four guys on a fishing trip in the wilderness discover a body of a young woman in a creek, a woman who's part aboriginal; they decide to finish their activities before reporting the body 2 days later. When the press gets ahold of the story the men are criticized for their irresponsibility; their actions are also interpreted as racist by the local native population. Claire (Laura Linney), the wife of one of the men, Stewart (Gabriel Byrne), can't believe they didn't immediately report the body and becomes suspicious of the incident. Meanwhile the killer is on the loose."Jindabyne" combines elements of "Deliverance" (1972) and "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975). The similarities with the former are obvious, while it shares the latter's haunting ambiance and overall mysteriousness of the Australian wilderness (albeit Eastern Australia rather than Western).While "Jindabyne" isn't the most captivating piece of celluloid and leaves some aspects unresolved, it did hold my attention and the story provokes numerous insights and questions. For instance, the killer is revealed in the opening shot. This isn't someone frothing at the mouth with evil, but rather an ordinary-looking electrician which shows that there are ordinary-looking people out there who have no qualms about snuffing out a person's life for their own selfish purposes, just as there are people who would steal, molest or falsely testify without a second thought. We shouldn't assume everyone's like us. There are evil people out there who prey on others. If the aboriginal girl had realized this she wouldn't have allowed herself to fall into the killer's grasp.The story gives evidence that the men were fishoholics excited about their adventure and simply weren't prepared to handle the burden and responsibility of a mysterious dead body. Hence, they temporarily blocked out the corpse and continued their endeavors. Later, in the big fight scene with Claire, Stewart admits with all the rage that only guilt can cook up, that it did FEEL GOOD to be fishing for awhile, free from the shackles of his every-day mundane existence in "civilization." But how could it? Maybe because many men have the ability to focus on the moment and, basically, forget, for a while, the circumstances surrounding them.This, I think, director Ray Lawrence portrays effectively in the fishing scene. The scene is a soothing interlude between moments of tension; it's like momentary heaven on earth. And then they remembered the dead body.Many say the movie is about making a stupid decision and the requisite consequences, as well as repentance, forgiveness and compassion. True, but the movie is also about the differences between the way man and woman view and deal with reality. I doubt most women would be able to ignore the presence of a corpse enough to enjoy a fishing holiday, which explains why Claire becomes appalled at the incident. No wonder she looks at her husband as if she doesn't know him; their marriage was already strained and this rips it apart (to say nothing of the weirdo mother-in-law -- she'd give anyone the heebie-jeebies!).Another scene that depicts this difference is when Stewart comes home from the fishing trip in the middle of the night. Feeling guilty and confused, he needs to make love to Claire, to regain a bit of his humanity. Talking about it is not an option, there are simply no words. It's evidently a way for Stewart to "skip" the whole event, to pretend he's not concerned by it.Yet, I think the film is about scapegoating more than anything. A young girl is dead and it's next to impossible to discern who did it, so the community's collective pain is hurled at the four who trivialized her death in order to preserve their holiday. Also, the film obviously compares the men's cavalier disregard with the heartless indifference of the killer himself. Which isn't to say they're as bad as the murderer, not at all, but they do share one of the traits that enables him to do what he does.Theories on the implications of the bee sting: (1) It represents the girl taking some small revenge now that she was one with nature. (2) It showed nature beginning to assert its dominance over this man who professes a psychological link with artificial power, and the way he uses nature to abet his crimes (i.e. hiding in the rocks and disposing of his victims in the stream). (3) It simply shows that his cycle of predation and murder is an eroding one, in that the longer he keeps doing it the more things will happen that are beyond his control, and will eventually lead to his discovery. (4) It signifies how a murderer can kill a person with no remorse or anything, just like killing an insect. And (5) It shows how the killer's still alive since he can feel and react to the bee whereas the girl's dead and gone as her body is unable to feel or react to the insects transgressing her corpse (as depicted in an earlier scene).The only criticism I can voice concerns the corpse of the girl; her body almost looks sexy, which is never the case in real life and even more so in this case since the body's been dead for awhile and lying in a creek under the hot sun. My wife works at a burial park and sees bodies all the time, young and old. Corpses are gross and smelly. Death is never sexy.