''Jindabyne'' is a 2006
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
n
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
film by third time feature director
Ray Lawrence and starring
Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel James Byrne (born 12 May 1950) is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, audiobook narrator, and author. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's s ...
,
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress. Having studied acting at Juilliard School (1986-1990), she became known for her complex and multilayered performances on stage and screen. She has received various accolades, ...
,
Deborra-Lee Furness
Deborra-Lee Furness (born 30 November 1955) is an Australian actress and producer. She is married to actor Hugh Jackman.
Early life
Furness was born in Annandale, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, and raised in Melbourne, Victoria.
At ...
and
John Howard
John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the s ...
. ''Jindabyne'' was filmed entirely on location in and around the Australian country town of the same name:
Jindabyne
Jindabyne () is a town in south-east New South Wales, Australia that overlooks Lake Jindabyne near the Snowy Mountains, in Snowy Monaro Regional Council. It is a popular holiday destination year round, especially in winter. This is due to its p ...
,
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
, situated next to the
Snowy Mountains
The Snowy Mountains, known informally as "The Snowies", is an IBRA subregion in southern New South Wales, Australia, and is the tallest mountain range in mainland Australia, being part of the continent's Great Dividing Range cordillera system ...
.
It was one of a rush of over 16 Australian cinema releases that year. Critics praised its refinement and the film is credited as a signal of Australian cinema's maturity.
The screenplay was written by
Beatrix Christian, and was adapted from the late American short story writer and poet
Raymond Carver
Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He contributed to the revitalization of the American short story during the 1980s.
Early life
Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mi ...
's 1975 title, "So Much Water So Close to Home". The short story was the basis for a segment in Robert Altman's ''
Short Cuts
''Short Cuts'' is a 1993 American comedy-drama film, directed by Robert Altman. Filmed from a screenplay by Altman and Frank Barhydt, it is inspired by nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver. The film has a Los Angeles setting, which is ...
'' (1993). Carver's story had also been retold in music by Australian artist
Paul Kelly in the song "Everything's Turning to White", on his 1989 album ''
So Much Water So Close to Home
''So Much Water So Close to Home'' is an album by Australian rock band Paul Kelly and the Messengers and was originally released in August 1989. The title comes from a short story of the same name by author Raymond Carver. Carver died in August ...
''. Kelly contributed to the score of the 2006 film as well.
''Jindabyne'' had its world premiere at the
2006 Cannes Film Festival
The 59th Cannes Film Festival was held from 17 to 28 May 2006. Twenty films from eleven countries were in competition for the Palme d'Or. The President of the Official selection Jury was Wong Kar-wai, the first Chinese director to preside over the ...
and its North American premiere at the
2006 Toronto International Film Festival
The 31st Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 7 to September 16, 2006. Opening the festival was Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's ''The Journals of Knud Rasmussen'', a film that "explores the history of the through the eyes of a ...
. The film was released in Australia on 20 July 2006 and was released in the United States on 27 April 2007. Its production budget was reportedly $10.8 million.
Plot
On an annual fishing trip, in isolated high country, Stewart (
Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel James Byrne (born 12 May 1950) is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, audiobook narrator, and author. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's s ...
), Carl (
John Howard
John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the s ...
), Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and Billy (
Simon Stone
Simon Stone (born 19 August 1984) is an Australian film and theatre director, writer and actor.
Early life
Stone is Australian, but was born in Basel and grew up in Cambridge and Melbourne. His father, Stuart Stone, was a biochemist and his mot ...
) find a girl's body in the river; she has been brutally murdered by Gregory (
Chris Haywood
Chris Haywood (born ) is an English-born Australian actor, writer and producer, with close to 500 screen performances to his name. Haywood has also worked as a casting director, art director, sound recordist, camera operator, gaffer, grip, l ...
), a local electrician. The girl (Tatea Reilly) turns out subsequently to be
Aboriginal. The discovery shocks and confuses the men. Only the youngest of the men, Billy, understands this is a crime scene but he is ignored. The men initially suggest hiking back the following morning as it is too late in the day to safely navigate their way to their trucks. Stewart secures the girl's body by the ankle to the riverbank, so she will not drift downstream and get lost in the rapids. However, Stewart the next day goes fishing and, after catching an especially large fish, the men decide to spend the rest of the afternoon continuing their trip before informing the police in the morning.
While the men are gone, some of the men's wives (Jude and Claire) and Rocco's girlfriend (Carmel), get together socially. During their conversation, Jude (Carl's wife) reveals that their daughter died nearly two years ago, leaving them to raise their granddaughter Caylin-Calandria, who has psychological issues and towards whom Jude shows resentment. When Stewart's wife, Claire (Laura Linney) remarks that she does not think Stewart would want more children, Jude reveals that Claire had a mental breakdown after her son Tom was born and left the family for 18 months.
The men return home late Sunday night. After reporting the body to the police, they each go to their respective homes. Stewart goes home to Claire and finds her sleeping on her stomach, reminiscent of the posture of the dead body. He talks to her briefly and initiates intimacy. However, he does not disclose the find, which later causes problems when Claire finds out he left the girl's body to keep fishing.
The next morning, the police show up at Claire and Stewart's house to ask Stewart to answer some more questions. The men gather in the police station, where the police officer expresses his disgust that they would "fish over a dead body" instead of reporting it as soon as they could. Claire is stunned that Stewart would do such a thing and keeps trying to understand his reasons. The men come up with a story that Carl strained his ankle thus they could not walk back as early as they would have otherwise. Because the girl was Aboriginal, some believe the men neglected the dead girl out of racism. All of the men's businesses are vandalised in retaliation by some of the Aboriginal community, with painted slurs branding them racists. It becomes clear from this point that the western culture of a town that had to be abandoned and rebuilt on higher ground because of a dam and which is peopled by immigrants, is at odds with the ancient belief system of the local Aboriginal community.
Claire and Elissa (Billy's partner) are the only ones of the group who express any remorse and condemnation for what happened. Jude repeatedly defends her husband Carl, while Carl argues that the girl was already dead and thus it made no difference to her whether they stayed or not. The more Claire pushes Stewart and the others to make amends, the more tensions increase in the town.
Prior to the fishing trip, Claire had begun throwing up repeatedly from morning sickness, which she hid from everyone. With her marriage unravelling, and haunted by her post-post-partum breakdown and abandonment of her first child, she inquires of a medical professional about how to get an abortion. However, she has still not gone through with it - nor revealed her pregnancy to Stewart - by the end of the film.
Despite encountering hostility from the rest of the group, Claire continues to try to reach out to the girl's family. She gathers donations to give to the girl's family for her funeral. Claire even goes to the family's home and is rebuked. She later returns to give them the money she has gathered.
Increasingly troubled that Claire continues to probe for the truth of what happened, Stewart erupts in rage one evening when Claire asks him to talk about it. The two begin fighting physically, while slinging barbs at each other about their past mistakes. The next day, after Billy and his family have left town for the coast, Stewart tells Claire - who he suspects is planning to leave him - that he will never allow her to take his son from him. Carl similarly stands up for Caylin-Calandria after Jude once again shows anger towards her, saying she cannot take her pain of losing their daughter out on their blameless granddaughter.
The next day, Claire goes to the memorial service. The rest of the men and their wives, as well as the children, show up to pay their respects, too. When Stewart apologises on behalf of the men, the girl's father throws dirt on him, spits on the ground and walks away, but there are no further objections to their presence. Stewart also asks Claire to come home.
Throughout the movie, the murdering electrician continuously pops up around the characters, and even attends the memorial service. He is never caught.
Cast
Reception
Box office
''Jindabyne'' grossed $400,438 in Australia and $5,643,674 internationally for a total of just over $6 million,
against a production budget of 10.8 million.
Critical response
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 65%, based on 100 reviews, and an average rating of 5.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Jindabyne''s disparate themes may not quite cohere, but the film features fine performances from Linney and Byrne." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
the film has a score of 65% based on reviews from 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
A. O. Scott of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote that "The real flaw is that the movie's best features - the aching clarity of its central performances - threaten to be lost in a wilderness of metaphor and mystification."
''
The Age
''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...
'' hailed it as "easily one of the most engrossing, thoughtful, adult-oriented big-screen dramas produced in Australia for 20 years."
Festivals
* 2006 –
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
–
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
* 2006 –
UK –
Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is a film festival that runs for two weeks in June each year. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival. EIFF presents both UK and international films (all ti ...
* 2006 –
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
–
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...
* 2006 –
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
–
Valladolid International Film Festival
The Valladolid International Film Festival, popularly known as Seminci (short for ; ), is a film festival held annually in Valladolid, Spain. First held in 1956 as ('Valladolid Religious Film Week'), the Seminci is one of the longest-standing fi ...
* 2007 –
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
–
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
The Dublin International Film Festival (DIFF; ) is an annual film festival held in Dublin, Ireland, since 2003.
History
Dublin International Film Festival was established in 2003. It was revived by Michael Dwyer, international film critic and ' ...
Awards
Won:
* 2006 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Actress in a Supporting Role (
Deborra-Lee Furness
Deborra-Lee Furness (born 30 November 1955) is an Australian actress and producer. She is married to actor Hugh Jackman.
Early life
Furness was born in Annandale, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, and raised in Melbourne, Victoria.
At ...
).
* 2006 Valladolid International Film Festival: Best Actress (
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress. Having studied acting at Juilliard School (1986-1990), she became known for her complex and multilayered performances on stage and screen. She has received various accolades, ...
), Best Music.
* 2006 Stockholm Film Festival: Best Manuscript (by Beatrix Christian), FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film.
* 2006 Aria Fine Arts Award: Best Soundtrack (Australia)
* 2006
Australian Screen Sound Guild Awards: Best Achievement in Sound for Film Sound Recording, Best Achievement in Sound for Film Sound Mixing, Feature Film Soundtrack of the Year.
* 2006 Edinburgh Film Festival: Herald Angel Award
Nominated:
* 2006
Australian Film Institute Awards
The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, known as the AACTA Awards, are presented annually by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA). The awards recognise excellence in the film and television industry, ...
: Best Film, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Original Music Score, Best Actor in a Lead Role (
Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel James Byrne (born 12 May 1950) is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, audiobook narrator, and author. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's s ...
), Best Actress in a Lead Role (
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress. Having studied acting at Juilliard School (1986-1990), she became known for her complex and multilayered performances on stage and screen. She has received various accolades, ...
), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (
Deborra-Lee Furness
Deborra-Lee Furness (born 30 November 1955) is an Australian actress and producer. She is married to actor Hugh Jackman.
Early life
Furness was born in Annandale, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, and raised in Melbourne, Victoria.
At ...
).
* 2006
IF Awards
The Inside Film Awards (now known as the IF Awards) is an annual awards ceremony and broadcast platform for the Australian film industry, developed by the creators of Inside Film Magazine, Stephen Jenner and David Barda, and originally produced fo ...
: Best Director, Best Actress (
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress. Having studied acting at Juilliard School (1986-1990), she became known for her complex and multilayered performances on stage and screen. She has received various accolades, ...
), Best Actor (
Gabriel Byrne
Gabriel James Byrne (born 12 May 1950) is an Irish actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, audiobook narrator, and author. His acting career began in the Focus Theatre before he joined London's Royal Court Theatre in 1979. Byrne's s ...
), Best Cinematography.
* 2006 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards: Best Film, Best Actress in a Lead Role (
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress. Having studied acting at Juilliard School (1986-1990), she became known for her complex and multilayered performances on stage and screen. She has received various accolades, ...
), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (
John Howard
John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the s ...
), Best Music Score.
* 2006 Valladolid International Film Festival: Golden Spike (
Ray Lawrence).
* 2006 Australian Screen Sound Guild Awards: Best Achievement in Sound For Film Sound Recording, Best Achievement in Sound for Film Sound Design, Best Achievement in Sound for Film Sound Mixing, Feature Film Soundtrack of the Year.
Soundtrack
A soundtrack was released by
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...
in 2006. At the
ARIA Music Awards of 2006
The 20th annual Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards (generally known as ARIA Music Awards or simply The ARIAS) were held on 29 October 2006 at the Acer Arena at the Sydney Olympic Park complex. Presenters on the night includ ...
the soundtrack won the
ARIA Award for Best Original Soundtrack, Cast or Show Album
The ARIA Music Award for Best Original Soundtrack / Cast / Show Album is an award presented within the Fine Arts Awards at the annual ARIA Music Awards. The ARIA Awards recognise "the many achievements of Aussie artists across all music genres ...
.
[ARIA Award previous winners. ]
Track listing
# "Rocks"
# "Jindabyne Fair"
# "Body Drop"
# "Claire On The Road"
# "Mirror"
# "Morning Fishing"
# "Stewart And Claire"
# "Power Lines"
# "Nukkanya"
# "Night River"
# "So Soft"
# "Going to Susan's"
# "Welcome Dance"
# "Way That I Love You"
# "Humming Way"
# "Troitsa Bratya"
# "Everything's Turning to White"
References
External links
''Jindabyne'' official website*
The Director Interviews: Ray Lawrence, ''Jindabyne''at ''Filmmaker Magazine''
Jindabyne at the National Film and Sound Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jindabyne (Film)
ARIA Award-winning albums
Australian drama films
Films based on short fiction
2006 films
Films directed by Ray Lawrence
Films scored by Paul Kelly (Australian musician)
Sony Pictures Classics films
Roadshow Entertainment films
Films set in New South Wales
2006 drama films
2000s English-language films
es:Jindabyne
nl:Jindabyne