FILMS/
JINDABYNE
World Cinema
Australia, 2006, 123 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Fri, Apr 27 / 06:30 / Kabuki / JIND27K
Sat, Apr 28 / 09:00 / Kabuki / JIND28K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Ray Lawrence
- prod
-
Catherine Jarman
- scr
-
Beatrix Christian
- cam
-
David Williamson
- editor
-
Karl Sodersten
- mus
-
Paul Kelly, Dan Luscombe
- cast
-
Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, Chris Haywood, Deborra-lee Furness, John Howard, Leah Purcell, Simon Stone
- source
-
Sony Pictures Classics, 550 Madison Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10022 EMAIL: info@spe.sony.com
This startling drama by the director of Bliss and Lantana takes as its starting point Raymond Carver’s short story "So Much Water So Close to Home" (also adapted for Robert Altman’s Short Cuts). Fleshing out the general scenario about male buddies who discover a corpse while on a fishing trip, he’s come up with a multivalent dissection of marriage, race and culture. When gas station owner Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) and his pals discover the dead body of a 19-year-old Aboriginal woman at their favorite fishing hole, they make the calamitous decision to secure the body out of sight and continue with their vacation. Though they still return home early from the trip, word of their negligence gets out, and the men’s friendship becomes riven with tensions. Compoundingly, Stewart’s wife, Claire (Laura Linney), finds herself increasingly disturbed by her husband’s actions and, meaning well but not fully understanding the situation, looks for forgiveness from the local Aboriginal community. Throughout the film, first-time screenwriter Beatrix Christian astutely investigates all sides of the moral predicament as well as the locals’ varied responses. Eschewing easy finger-pointing and simplistic resolutions for something much more three-dimensional, she gets into all of the nooks and crannies suggested by the source material. By making the victim Aboriginal, the story gains further nuance. Bolstered by humane, lived-in performances by Byrne, Linney and other lesser-known actors and David Williamson’s evocative cinematography, Lawrence has come up with a film that feels literary in its complexity and fully realized in its cinematic caliber.
—Rod Armstrong
Sponsored by CBS 5 and The Bay Area CW. Presented in association with Advance: Global Australian Professionals.