JINDABYNE (Ray Lawrence/Australia)

[oscar jubis]

Jindabyne is a township in New South Wales, originally inhabitatted exclusively by aborigines. European immigrants gradually settled there. In 1964, the old town was drowned by rising waters caused by the construction of the Snowy Mountains Dam; the town had to be relocated. Jindabyne Lake now covers the sacred ground of the aboriginal population, who live scattered in the surrounding area.

Director Ray Lawrence's film transplants American writer Raymond Carver's short story "So Much Water So Close To Home" to this locale (it was also used by Robert Altman for one episode of Short Cuts). The opening scene shows a man, who turns out to be the town's electrician, forcing a car driven by a 19 year-old aboriginal woman to stop on a lonely stretch of road. Soon thereafter, he dumps her corpse in a river. The film introduces the four men (and their families) who simply won't allow their finding the corpse to disturb their fishing expedition. The men report it to police two days after finding the body and securing it to some branches with fishing line so it won't flow away and crash against the rocks. A police chief is only shown once, angry at the men for waiting so long to contact authorities, since Jindabyne doesn't concern itself with finding and catching the killer. It mostly focuses on the impact of the morally-questionable decision on the biracial community, and on the relationship between Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) and his wife Claire (Laura Linney). The Irish gas station owner and his American wife are richly drawn, and provided with significant backstory. They experienced a painful separation following the birth of their 6 year-old son Tom, and have tentatively managed to stay together despite lingering tensions. A possible new pregnancy and Claire's befuddlement and disappointment by Stewart's insensitive action precipitate a new crisis.

Lamentably, Lawrence and scriptwriter Beatrix Christian pile up the characters and can't possibly begin to explore all the baggage they carry. Secondary characters are given protagonist-size issues and the filmmakers are simply not up to the challenge. For instance, the wife of one of Stewart's buddies has adopted her granddaughter but seems to hate her. The little girl has unresolved bereavement issues following her mom's death. She and little Tom stab the school's pet hamster with a fishing knife and kill a bird. Like the Japanese girl in Babel, these characters deserve their own movie, one that cares about them, one that takes an interest in what afflicts them. Several dramatically weak scenes appear more so due to the ponderous fade-to-blacks that separate them. Jindabyne boasts very good performances and evocative use of landscape. It's an imaginative re-thinking of Carver's original story that serves as an allegory of the history between Europeans and aborigines in Australia. The film generates great interest when focused on the crumbling marriage of Stewart and Claire, but the flaws above-mentioned render it ultimately unsatisfying. Particularly so, coming from the director of the superior Lantana.

[Chris Knipp]

This review, previously published on your Miami Festival thread, is repeated here because the movie, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics I don't know how widely, and is now in theaters--at least out here, showing currently in Berkeley and San Francisco. Haven't seen it but on the face of it Altman might be a better collaborator or adapter of Raymond Carver and Short Cuts is full of riches otherwise. The laser disc on which I watched, or you might better say studied, the Altman film (one of my favorites by him) had elaborate bonus materials including the texts of all the stories, and I was struck by how well Altman caught their spirit (though of course different actors might have caught different tonalities). It might be worth noting that the Carver story is only 2,300 words long -- about six pages. The text of it can be found online here (http://www.nyx.net/~kbanker/chautauqua/carver.htm) (caution: there are some typos). Sometimes it seems the limitations of a two-hour movie make it seem more appropriate for adapting a short story than a novel; but nonetheless it's kind of ironic perhaps that the maker of Lantana (who obviously from that film likes to work with overlays of different stories) should have chosen to produce something you describe as burdened with an over-large cast with too much back-story from one of Raymond Carver's typically tight-lipped and concentrated little tales. "So Much Water So Close to Home" is told from the point of view of the wife, Claire. She names the other men on the fishing trip with Stuart, but they don't appear. The men's negligence makes her angry at her husband, Stuart, and leads her to go to the girl's funeral, but when he decides a day or two later to soothe things over with a little lovin', she acquiesces. Whatever else there is, the reader supplies. That's the way Carver works, and it's his special power. Of course there's nothing wrong with heavily embroidering a bare template of a story in a film, but it completely departs from the spirit of the writer, as Altman's Short Cuts emphatically did not -- though of course he did merge several stories. Other reviwes of Jindabyne have offered other criticisms: that it is too understated or too mysterious. Oftentimes, as I've said more than once, Less Is More.

[oscar jubis]

Yes, oftentimes less is more. I'm a bit surprised at the extent to which my chief complaint about Jindabyne is echoed in reviews that have appeared recently.

"...too many of the incidents, conversations and subplots seem to have been stuffed into the delicate vessel of Carver's story..." (New York Times)

"too many extraneous elements have been added" (Chicago Reader)

"...can't contain all that the filmmakers want to throw in" (Entertainment Weekly)

"Lawrence too often errs on the side of embellishing details that didn't need to be expanded upon"

"Carver has said all he needs to say and anything else is bloat" (New York Magazine)

"...suffers from too many extraneous elements" (San Francisco Chronicle)

The inner core of the film and the performances by Byrne and Linney are powerful though, enough for some to view the film quite favorably. Do you plan to see it?

[Chris Knipp]

I think maybe I should see it right away before I lose all interest; in retrospect Lantana didn't leave a very strong impression though it was interesting in its way.

I don't see why you're "surprised" at what is an extremely obvious failing, given the fact that Raymond Carver is a well-known short story writer and this is one of his signature tales. It's almost not even worth further discussion. What we'd like to hear about is, what is done right in Jindabyne. I guess I'll find out tonight if I go (it's only showing at a quarter to ten). What interested me was that the story is online and short, so anybody who reads this thread can consult it; and the fact that we have something I'd consider almost a masterpiece by Robert Altman to compare Ray Lawrence's version to. Short Cuts is just such an interesting sequence of short films, and if you can get hold of the materials in that laser disc (which I copied on videotape, in part anyway), you have so much to ponder that enriches the experience. There was even an interview by Michael Sragow I think, with Kael, because she was such a champion of Altman; a making-of; an interview with Altman; with the lead actors; all the stories in clear text; etc. This led me to get a Carver collection and read a lot of his other stories. And there's the interesting question of his editor, who may, as with Thomas Wolfe and some other writers, notably the mysterious B. Traven (another writer whose role in film is important), have been really more like a co-author. As you may know, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land was just an inchaote mess until Ezra Pound got to it, and honed it down into one of the signal poems of the early 20th century in English. Less is very very often more, a lot more. Then again, there are some writers, like Proust, who it would be a crime to cut, and some filmmakers who really can't do it any other way than long. Arnaud Desplechin seems like that. His stuff goes on too long, but that's just the way it is. If you cut it, you take out the best of it. Sounds like that isn't the case at all with Jindabyne. Isn't it a little fishy that the "director's cuts" are always longer versions?

[oscar jubis]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I think maybe I should see it right away before I lose all interest; in retrospect Lantana didn't leave a very strong impression though it was interesting in its way.
To be specific about my estimation of Lantana, it placed #12 on my favorites (Eng. Lang.) list of 2001, which was in my opinion a very good year. It would have placed a little higher were it released in a different year.

I don't see why you're "surprised" at what is an extremely obvious failing
Surprised "at the extent" others voiced the same failing. Who knows, you might watch it and opine it's not a failing at all. Others have.

What we'd like to hear about is, what is done right in Jindabyne.
"Jindabyne boasts very good performances and evocative use of landscape. It's an imaginative re-thinking of Carver's original story that serves as an allegory of the history between Europeans and aborigines in Australia. The film generates great interest when focused on the crumbling marriage of Stewart and Claire" (OJ)

we have something I'd consider almost a masterpiece by Robert Altman
I didn't respond to your Altman comment earlier because it's been over a decade since I watched it and I didn't write film criticism back then so I can't quote any opinions I had after watching it. All I can say is that it placed at #8 on my list of favorites (Eng. Lang) for 1993 (which means I thought it was very good but no masterpiece).

some filmmakers who really can't do it any other way than long. Arnaud Desplechin seems like that.
I agree. Desplechin is a good example. Jacques Rivette is the "classic one". But I like their films, especially Rivette's, the way they are. In the case of Jindabyne, the issue is not exactly that the film is too long, at least not in my opinion.

[Chris Knipp]

I realize Jindabyne isn't super-long, but from your and other descriptions it might benefit from radical cutting to eliminated all the distracting minor characters who're given stories too elaborate to be developed because that from what you say would make it a good movie. I don't know about years. I just happen to like Short Cuts better than most of Altman. I recognize his originality, his way with actors, and all that, but I just don't happen to like some of his most admired movies as much as most people seem to, and I do like Short Cuts. I do like Six Degrees of Separation and This Boy's Life, which I see are from 1993. There are others of that year that are highly regarded, but they aren't favrorites of mine. I don't quite see the significance of rating films by year. As a method it seems itself overrated. The oeuvre of a great director should be considered independent of years.

It seems to me that if so many others "voiced" the "failing" of excessive additional details, it's pretty likely to be a real "failing," but I'll let ;you know if I get to see the film. A week from now I'll be in NYC again, and then there'll be so much to see and do that Jindabyne may become very low priority.

I don't share quite your love of Rivette, you know, but I make but little doubt he is in the category with Desplechin. He requires a lot of footage to develop his ideas and he has to do it in his way.

When I said I want to hear what is right about Jindabyne, I meant you are emphasizing its fault, and I want to know if the fault is outweighed, which as you say, I may find.

As for 2001, it and 2002 both look like decent years, 2001 was good for Mexican movies, but again, what does it matter in the whole scheme of things? But if you've gone back and reexamined those times and found Lantana good, that must mean something, to you. I was making movie best lists back then, but they're not on my computer so I can't look at it now. I am pretty sure Lantana was in my top ten.

[Chris Knipp]

Ray Lawrence: Jindabyne (2006)

Despite much interest and excellent acting, few real rewards

Review by Chris Knipp

Despite good acting and rich exploration of interrelated dysfunctional family situations -- the same kind of thing Australian director Ray Lawrence's Lantana was notable for, so he's doing what he wants to do -- Jindabyne doesn't work, and it leaves one feeling unsatisfied.

Lawrence has so much going on in this film, it's as if Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's Babel had been concentrated into one little Australian town. And it's all interesting. It begins with the four men on an ill-fated fishing trip in the Raymond Carver story "So Much Water So Close to Home," on which this film is based. Making their camp up in the woods one of the men finds a dead woman floating in the river. It's a long way from the car, a very long way from home. The weather's lovely, the fish are big, and they're easy to catch, and these things lead the men to make a strategic and logistical and moral error. There's been a murder. It needs to be reported right away. You don't put a serious crime scene on hold till you finish your recreational activities. But that's what they choose to do. They tie the body to keep it from floating away, and do their fishing before they call the cops.

In the Carver story, this miscalculation fundamentally does only one important thing: it aggravates an already strained relationship in the case of the main couple, the story being told from the viewpoint of the wife. Jindabyne isn't any different. Claire (Laura Linney), the wife, is still the main character. The same thing happens to the relationship. Only everything else is ratcheted up too, with all sorts of additional complications and damaged relationships added. The men's carelessness is the big headline in the local paper. That's in the short story too, only this time there's not just the name of Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) but a photograph (bigger than small town photos normally get to be) of the youngest, most uncomplicated member of the party, Billy (Simon Stone), holding up a fish with a goofy smile under a big banner headline: "MEN FISH OVER DEAD BODY." Unlike Stewart, who knew they had to lie and get their lies to mesh, Billy's been candid. He's also disadvantaged by being a carefree guy with a happy marriage and a little kid. The movie banishes him before it's over, leaving only the dour and troubled majority. Some of the others come to blows, and their marriages start to strain too. And in and out of the whole thing is woven some pretty portentous music.

Not only has the American story been transplanted to the vast spaces of Australia; it's been given a racial dimension. The dead woman is of aboriginal origin, and her people look on the men's delay as a "white hate crime" and vandalize the culprits' houses and businesses. The killer's another new dimension, if a vague one. Carver's killer was anonymous and just got caught the next day: this one's a dangling thread. We see him trap the victim on the road and dump her body later. But how he does it and why we never learn; he's just a figure who keeps reappearing all the way through. Another new complication: the main couple isn't either white or aboriginal Australian: they're the Irish Byrne (in full brogue here) and the American Linney (in full bustling American mode), and their problems go back to the earliest time of their marriage. And Claire's troubles have been expanded to include a pregnancy, and personal conflicts not only with Stewart but with her Irish mother-in-law, one of the few uncomplicated characters. She wants to help; but she gets brutal treatment from both spouses for her trouble. Their little boy, Dean (Carver's name again) is a bona-fide character, and he has a little girlfriend who's a bad influence -- though she does sort of trick him into learning how to swim, one of this downbeat film's few positive events.

Another new complication: the main couple isn't either white or aboriginal Australian: they're the Irish Byrne (in full brogue here) and the American Linney (in full bustling American mode), and their problems go back to the earliest time of their marriage. And Claire's troubles have been expanded to include a pregnancy, and personal conflicts not only with Stewart but with her Irish mother-in-law, one of the few uncomplicated characters. She wants to help; but she gets brutal treatment from both spouses for her trouble. Their little boy, Dean (Carver's name again) is a bona-fide character, and he has a little girlfriend who's a bad influence -- though she does sort of trick him into learning how to swim, one of this downbeat film's few positive events.

Interestingly enough, the Irish guy is a weak, dishonest, TV-watching beer-guzzler who screws like a robot, and the American wife, who so characterizes him, is an emasculating busybody do-gooder. True to form -- or true to stereotype -- though this may seem, both are well-meaning people. But there's a culture clash between them, and Claire's American desire to work everything out clashes with the white Australians' way of quietly moving on.

There's no faulting any of the actors, who bring everything wonderfully to life, whoever circumscribed their characters' situations or mindsets. The fault is with a screenplay that doesn't just make Carver's typically succinct and haunting little story -- already recreated effectively, and economically, as one segment of Robert Altman's creative Carver homage Short Cuts -- into something richer and more complex, but into something so complicated it becomes difficult to care about what happens because there is nothing to focus on. Despite an awkwardly "healing" aboriginal memorial service and spirit-expulsion that the fishing party men and their families rather reluctantly attend (except for Claire, who's been campaigning to raise money for it and insisting they must go to it); despite all the shit hitting various fans, nothing really does happen. Notably the Carver story, for all its tight-lipped ambiguity, allows for a simple final reconciliation: quick sex.

An aspect of the over-plotting of Jindabyne is that despite characters who come alive, the central ones all appear to be just flailing hopelessly about. The film so takes its time getting down to business with the fishing trip that the discovery of the body loses effect (must we see each man catch his fish?), and it's not till half way through running time that the men return and are confronted with their error. Then things come to life -- for a while. But as the film begins to wander from subplot to subplot, that energy dissipates again. An honorable failure, perhaps, but nonetheless a pretty complete one, Jindabyne may not be pure punishment, but it's lacking in real rewards, and Lawrence's use of Raymond Carver and collaboration with Beatrix Christian both seem to have been ill-fated.

[Chris Knipp]

I can't say the film would benefit from radical cutting. It's over-elaborate conception just goes too deep. A.O. Scott this time wrote an exceptionally just review (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/26/arts/fmreview27.php), which brings up the moral issues I've slighted. I really like this part of it:
"She was dead. But don't you see? She needed your help," Claire says to her husband, raising an unusual and difficult moral problem: what are the obligations of the living toward the dead?

"So Much Water So Close to Home" suggests that men and women approach this question differently, and that the chill that falls over Claire and Stewart's relationship is partly an expression of the gender division embedded in every marriage. To this basic schism, "Jindabyne" adds more, including cultural and racial elements that are no less interesting for being altogether remote from Carver's concerns. In the film, Claire seems almost stereotypically American in the way she insists on working through the trauma of the dead girl's discovery, pushing toward the therapeutic goals of healing and closure while her white Australian friends urge her to move on and let go of her fury and shame. Their own unsentimental, shrugging ideas about death are at odds with the Aboriginal customs as well, and the mutual suspicion and incomprehension between the two populations, as well as the clumsy efforts toward tolerance and respect, are addressed with sensitivity. The paragraphs that follow are also fine. Really excellent piece by Scott, admirable in every way and far better than my hasty effort at acknowledging the film's virtues in the use of actors and depiction of milieu as well as the "heavy" feel of the overburdened structure. I like this:
Too many of the incidents, conversations and subplots seem to have been stuffed into the delicate vessel of Carver's story, rather than allowed to grow organically out of it.