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Jindabyne
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 9 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Mystery | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Beatrix Christian
Raymond Carver (short story So Much Water So Close to Home)
Directed by: Ray Lawrence
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 27, 2007
DVD: October 2, 2007
Running Time: 123 minutes, Color
Origin: Australia
Summary
RATING: R for disturbing images, language and some nudity
Starring Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, Chris Haywood, Deborra-Lee Furness, John Howard, Leah Purcell, Eva Lazzaro, and Sean Rees-Wemyss
Adapted from a short story by Raymond Carver, this film centers around the discovery of a woman's dead body by a group of men on a fishing trip.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Lantana
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
TV Guide Ken Fox
Lawrence delves deep into the moral dilemma at the heart of Carver's deceptively simple tale. By deliberately making the young woman in the river aboriginal, the film also opens up yet another dimension in the reaction to the men's inaction: Would they have acted any differently had the murder victim been white?
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Jindabyne's strength and power come from a number of factors: its origin, its current landscape and the unusual way its writer-director, Ray Lawrence, has chosen to work.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Megan Lehmann
The same organic characterizations that marked Lawrence's acclaimed 2001 film "Lantana" will attract fans of strong adult drama.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Jindabyne wears its class politics lightly, weaving them into a ghost story about the intimate connection between how we treat our living and our dead that will hover around your shoulders long after you leave the theater.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Writer-director Ray Lawrence, well regarded for his two previous films, "Bliss" and "Lantana," expands Carver's work into an indictment of colonialism and an examination of the chasm that supposedly exists between men and women over matters of the heart.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Jindabyne -- named for the lakeside town in which the troubles spill -- can't contain all that the filmmakers want to throw in. Best to keep glued to the taut performance by Laura Linney.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
In the end, it's all a bit too self-consciously mysterious and Lawrence leans a bit too much on the atmosphere to do the work for him as he builds to a frustrating ending. But his vision of a place haunted by a restlessness it can't define proves unsettlingly infectious.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
While not everything in Jindabyne works, especially in its final, redemptive third, the film and its faces stay with you.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Dublin-born Byrne and native New Yorker Linney...are both exceptional at depicting characters about to burst from inner turmoil, and Linney, in particular, is heartbreaking.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
Jindabyne is uniquely Australian, dealing with Australian issues, and it boasts a wickedly wry conclusion that -- for everything that has come before -- is karmically just.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Deliberately paced, with an eerie, country-ish score from the Australian singer/songwriter Paul Kelly, Jindabyne is definitely a mystery. But it's not about who killed the woman - audiences know that practically from the outset.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
At its core, the story is a Mars vs. Venus case study.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Above all, this story is about the peril that lurks under life's surfaces.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The result is a mature and challenging motion picture, and something that will stick with viewers after the screen has gone dark.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Too many extraneous elements have been added--the victim here is an aborigine, which prompts a racial backlash against the men and their families--but at the movie's center lies the knotty story of a marriage poisoned by amorality.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Hand it to Lawrence and Christian. Jindabyne is a soberly, if sluggishly, crafted movie in which the bitterness never stops.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Never obtains the full impact of its potentially powerful inner core.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
I wish one-tenth of the films I saw were made with this much craft and integrity, this much intuitive understanding of where to put the camera, how much of the story to explain in words (not much) and how much to trust his outstanding cast to carry the film with their voices, faces and bodies.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Never manages to get its relationships framed in as sharp focus as "Lantana" and goes down some unproductive side roads in its attempt to get to the point.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Where it works best is in the domestic dance of death between a husband and a wife. Linney flutters with increasingly panicky intelligence throughout the film, while Byrne sinks further into his own bulk.
Read Full Review >Premiere Ethan Alter
Lawrence too often errs on the side of embellishing details that didn't need to be expanded upon.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Adapting a great short story, like Carver's "So Much Water So Close to Home," into a movie poses a dilemma: How to flesh it out to feature length without destroying what made it great in the first place?
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Scene by scene, Jindabyne has dramatic force, but it's an awfully long slog. Carver's smartest tactic was never outstaying his welcome.
Read Full Review >Empire Sam Toy
A great idea is weighed down by an over-egged screenplay, but the setting and cast bring out its best.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Sometimes, the sincerest form of tribute is inferiority. Watching the Australian film Jindabyne, one soon embraces the conclusion: Robert Altman did this work better. And with fewer brush strokes.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Jindabyne started with a bad idea and the finished film doesn't do well by it.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Has some strong acting. But largely because of its glacial pacing, the story ends up feeling too detached to move us as it should.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Jindabyne suffers from too many extraneous elements and from a story that doesn't land with enough force or purpose.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.5 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
M M gave it a9:
A lovely take on ambivalence and the delicate balance among human beings. Linney and Byrne, and the child actors, are excellent and the setting is often spectacular. Although at times it seemed a little long, I would readily watch it over again.
Michael E. gave it a4:
First the good: we get a typically strong performance by Laura Linney . Some of the scenes are good, but it takes most of the movie before we get anything like a sense of drama between the chaarcters. I've seen some people complain about the photography (all in natural light), but that is actually one of the film's true charms. The subplot about racism is heavy-handed and obvious, a far deviation from the Carver source material that hurts the story instead of adding to it. The film has to be jammed with padding to make a full two hours and some of this padding, like the lingering shots of the Australian countryside (which could be interpreted as sentimental, also working against the film's points) is painfully obvious. Jindabyne certainly does not compare favorably with the version in Robert Altman's Short Cuts from 13 years ago. Some of the scenes exist in both versions, and those analog scenes in Jindabyne are far too similar to the original. Somehow I doubt we'll be talking about this one in a year.
Bill S. gave it a3:
I'm afraid I have to disagree with the previous contributors. Lantana was a grown-up tale of how tragedy can result from credible people making plausible decisions. This, on the other hand, was about caricatures (repressed Irish boozehound? Neurotic world-citizen?) making unrecognisable choices. Sadly, as a result neither characters nor situation provoke empathy. The richness of the camerawork almost justifies the languorous pacing, but ultimately a stronger script would have been needed to avoid a sense of self-indulgence. I have no issue with the murderer simply being used for exposition, but in that case I should not have to watch him eating breakfast. For an intelligent (and entertaining) view of the complexities of human interaction, The Lives of Others was a vastly superior offering this year.
Michael L. gave it a9:
A deeply compelling yet deceptively disturbing meditation on the uncertain morality that can reside in all of us when confronted with a situation of unordinary and horrendous proportions. It's "What would you do?" plotline builds to a quietly powerful climax that had me paralyzed in the darkened theater long after the closing title sequence had ended.
Crossoverman gave it a9:
One of the great Australian films of all time. This fleshes out Raymond Carver's story in a complex and complicated way, layering in themes of race and childhood amongst the very strong story about men and women and how they deal with emotion. Incredible.
