Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Laura Linney, Max Cullen and Deborra Lee-Furness
Director: Ray Lawrence
Rated: M
RAY Lawrence directed one of the best Australian films in recent years, Lantana, an intelligent drama that engages an adult audience at several levels.
He has followed it up with an equally intelligent drama, Jindabyne.
It has been skilfully adapted to an Australian setting from the United States by Beatrix Christian. The source is a Raymond Carver story.
In this film, Jindabyne is certainly a place, identified and beautifully photographed along with its mountain environment, its lake and the local rivers.
But, it is also a state of mind, and the film develops this with increasing interest as well as challenge for the audience. It is one of those “what would you do in similar circumstances?” stories.
It opens with a murder, all too plausible in this setting. We know who did it, so there is no murder mystery and working with clues.
Rather, the plot takes us into several families in the town and sets up a strong set of characters.
The central family is the Kane family – Irish father (Gabriel Byrne in one of his best roles), a mother with an unexplained American accent (the excellent Laura Linney) and their young son Tom.
Friends and neighbours are Jude and Carl (Deborra-Lee Furness and John Howard) who have care of their alienated and rather scary, imaginative granddaughter.
Fishing is the key subject of talk – and will soon become the centre of a crisis as four friends go into the mountains for a weekend with rods and reels.
Plenty of character development here and a portrait of male bonding. But, they discover the murdered girl’s body.
After the shock, they make sure the body is secure and continue their fishing. No comment, which seems a little strange.
What would we have done? Continued as the men did? Pack up and inform the police? Get help?
This crisis is argued in the second part of the film.
Relationships grow tense. The police and the town disapprove of the men’s inaction. The murdered girl was Aboriginal which leads to all kinds of expressions of racism.
This is powerfully explored, all angles looked at.
Some resolution is possible at a smoking ceremony for the dead in the bush, a possibility for apology and for some understanding within the families.
Well acted, well written, the countryside a treat for the eye, and a plot and issues that challenge the mind.
