Chicken and "Jindabyne"

Sooooo....still haven't caried out my plan to fulfil the last New Year's Resolution I made all the way back in January, and it's December on Monday. Hmm. Am I a chicken, or have I just not had the opportunity? I think it's a little bit of both. Wonderful.

In the meantime I've been using my spare time by acting in a farce called Off The Hook, which was terrific fun. On the first Monday I've had where I didn't have any rehearsals, I sat down to start watching movies again which I haven't done in ages! This time the film was called Jindabyne. Here's the review down below - as always, watch out for spoilers, and enjoy!

Four men living in Australia go for a fishing trip in the mountains near their home town of Jindabyne. When they discover a young girl's mutilated body floating in the river they are faced with a moral dilemma that continues to haunt and affect them long after they return home to their respective partners...

The first thing to say about this film is that it is slow. It's not that long, but it is slow. Nothing seems rushed at all in the telling and unfolding of the story. It feels rather like the river that the four men start fishing in, in that it trickles rather than races like the threatening rapids one of them (Gabriel Byrne) mentions lie beyond their camping spot.

The film starts with the murderer waiting for his victim, though we never actually see the disgusting act take place - just the dumping of her body by him. He continues to float around the film in brief interludes, sometimes threatening, others just observing, reflecting the way in which we first meet him. What surprised me most was that he escapes justice; the film ends back where we started.

Instead the real crime, apparently, is what happens when the body is discovered. For a brief moment I was caught up with the four guys, enjoying their success at catching the big fish they've always wanted to catch in this mountain river, pushing the dead body away from the scene. Yet she quickly returns, and with her brings a new feeling of uneasy guilt to the proceedings. The town must face up to what the boys were doing - enjoying themselves instead of calling the police instantly.

There are clumsy moments in the film from here on in. In my opinion the race card (the girl has Aboriginal roots) is dealt, in comparison to the rest of the film, too quickly and swept aside too easily from the question of why the men do what they do. Instead it focuses more on the after effects of these actions, in particular on the character of Claire played by Laura Linney, rather than a study of these four men. It is a shame that her character and Byrne's, her husband, are used so much; it reduces one of the four men into a rather two-dimensional surfer dude, and more or less silences the other two. Any other problems faced by the other respective partners, though introduced, rarely get any more screen time.

It is perhaps also a shame that, though two arguably very brilliant actors, Linney and Byrne were needed at all. Though Byrne's presence in Australia is explained by his Irish mother who also lives there, Linney's origins remain a mystery She is obviously American, but how did she end up in Austrailia? Would the film have benefited more from casting two Australian actors in these parts, or was this casting just to try and get international audiences? Perhaps.

On the whole this was a thoughtful film, though it could perhaps have been a little clearer in what it was actually trying to say. Maybe that was the point; you have to make up your own mind as to who is truly guilty and who is not.

7/10

Laters.