Review: Jindabyne

Set in the title town in New South Wales, buddies on a fishing trip (Irish-born mechanic Gabriel Byrne, Stelios Yuakmis, Simon Stone, and veteran character actor John Howard) discover a floating dead body, but after tying the murder victim to a tree, continue with their leisurely activity for the time being. We know creepy Chris Haywood is the killer from the get-go, and he’s further filmed in an over-the-top manner, and Haywood acts accordingly. When they get back to town (they report the body to police just before leaving), the media and many of the townsfolk condemn the men, sickened by their callous inaction. The situation worsens when it is revealed that the victim was an Aboriginal woman, and that one of the fishermen’s partner (Leah Purcell) is herself an Aboriginal. Laura Linney (in full-on histrionic, brittle mode) plays Byrne’s unstable American wife (it’s believed she may have suffered post-partum depression in the past), who hates his hardened mother, and after the fishing incident, feels compelled to visit the victim’s familial community. Max Cullen plays Linney’s oddball co-worker, Deborra-Lee Furness plays Howard’s wife, who is also a plain-talking granny, whose creepy granddaughter has the unfortunate name of Caylin-Calandria (!), and who is still grieving the death of said girl’s mother.

Even worse than the overrated but well-acted “Lantana”, this critically lauded 2006 Ray Lawrence (“Lantana”, “Bliss”) piffle, is embarrassingly pretentious, incredibly boring, sometimes mystifying (the roles played by Haywood and Cullen make no sense whatsoever), and in its dealing with important Indigenous issues, truly insulting. I didn’t believe the behaviour of the men, yet felt the people back home also treated them somewhat unfairly. At least when Robert Altman told essentially the same story in his “Short Cuts” he only used the story as a subplot and didn’t include any embarrassing Australian cultural/political references whatsoever (the original story is not meant to be set in Australia, specifically). The characters are all either horrible (Linney- at her most shrill, Byrne’s bitchy mother), cold (Byrne, Furness, Howard), or creepy (Haywood- helpless with a terrible role as the loony killer, the inexplicably weird Cullen), which makes for unbearable viewing in and of itself. Why were the characters depicted in such an off-putting way? Even the kids (who are seen early on killing a classroom pet) are amazingly creepy little turds, I hated the buggers. The ending is probably the most sickeningly trivial treatments I’ve seen, of one of the most important cultural issues Australia has ever faced. I ended up truly despising the film for that aspect alone. To compare the events in this film to the horrible events of the ‘stolen generation’…Lawrence should be ashamed. It seems meant as an apology for those historical events, but I doubt Aboriginals will want an apology like that. And just what kind of sicko parent would call their poor child Caylin-Calandria? What the hell kind of name is that?

Scripted by Beatrix Christian, from a Raymond Carver short story, I seem alone in my views on this one, so don’t just take my word for it. You may like it, I might catch hell for hating it. I reacted very, very strongly against this one I’m afraid.

Rating: D+