Jindabyne

A haunting vision of human culpability . . .
This disturbing domestic drama takes a situation from a Raymond Carver story (already adapted for Robert Altman's film "Short Cuts") and dramatizes it in a far more unsettling way than Carver or Altman did. Four men in a small town in Australia get away from the women in their lives for a while by going on a fishing trip. When they get where they're going, they discover the body of a murdered woman but choose to put off notifying any authorities until they've finished what they came for - fishing. This insensitivity is the cause of an emotional upheaval that in the original story alienates one of the wives from her husband. In this film, the ramifications are much broader, disturbing the entire community and, because the victim is an aboriginal, triggering the outrage of her family and tribe.

To what extent the men's failure to act is racist or simply chauvinistic, it's difficult to say, since they are unclear themselves about what they've done. It seems to represent a...

A Murder and Its Implications for a Town's Families
JINDABYNE is a disturbing, somber little film from Australia - a film with profound observations about ethics, racism, the fragility of marriage, the vulnerability of children's minds, and the desperate need for respect for beliefs and peoples outside the mainstream. Beatrix Christian adapted the screenplay from one of Raymond Carver's brilliant short stories, 'So Much Water So Close to Home': it has been said that Carver had 'the ability to render graceful prose from dreary, commonplace, scrapping-the-bottom human misery' and this story embodies all of those traits. As directed by Ray Lawrence with a cast of excellent actors, JINDABYNE will likely become a classic movie - if enough people will take the time and commitment to see it.

In a small town called Jindabyne in Australia a group of four men depart their families for a fishing trip: Stewart Kane (Gabriel Byrne), Carl (John Howard), Rocco (Stelios Yiakmis) and Billy (Simon Stone). While fly fishing in the back...

Needed To Peak Its Head Above The Murky Waters
Stewart Kane (Gabriel Byrne, Vanity Fair) heads out with his local Jindabyne, Australia fishing buddies for a weekend of rest, recreation, and relaxation. But when Stewart discovers an aboriginal woman's body floating face-down in a river, things appear to have turned out for the worst. The largest casualty of the weekend is the men's commonsense. They don't hike out of the ravine, and instead finish their fishing weekend with some great catches. Then they head out and report the body.

The town and the men's lives quickly turn into a mess. The local media swarms them, and accusations of aboriginal prejudices rear up from the local natives. Stewart's wife Claire (Laura Linney, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) senses the deeper meanings of what her husband and his friends did, but has to battle with it through her own mental illness...

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