Thickly atmospheric Aussie adaptation of Raymond Carver’s frugal but ample short story, “So Much Water So Close to Home,” first seen onscreen in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. Ray Lawrence (whose previous Lantana didn’t do anything for me) and screenwriter Beatrix Christian open up the story a bit by cutting away to the killer, who, for dramatic clarity, was previously kept off the page. This adds a dimension of suspense (certain shots are mindful of Deliverance) and a dimension of irony (the fishermen who find the girl’s body are scapegoated while the culprit remains at large). The decision to add an element of racial anxiety (the murdered girl was an Aborigine) is frustratingly beside the point. It dilutes, it obfuscates. Carver’s modest objective was to dredge up the underlying tension within a marriage. Lawrence can’t resist the lure of portentous symbolism, and the powerful emotions get lost in a sea of metaphor. Suitably grown up, though, with goodly acting.
2 comments:
I've read a few of Carver's short stories but I think I missed that one. I can imagine the racial embellishment being frustrating; the same thing annoyed me recently when I finally saw Crimson Tide.
[spoilers!]
I felt that most of the added material in Jindabyne was "beside the point," as you say. I was really disappointed that screenwriter Beatrix Christian felt the need to show us the murderer... Mabye it does create suspense, but that suspense never leads anywhere--there's no payoff. Also, she creates all this backstory stuff (primarily focused around Claire & Stewart's troubled homelife, but there's also stuff about a young mother's suicide & her now-morbid daughter), and all of this fails to illuminate the dramatic core of the film. It's mere busywork that dilutes the impact of the story... especially since none of it leads anywhere. And all that bathos during the scene when the men discover the body--ugh. Maybe you can tell, but this film got under my skin.
I agree with Desson Thomson's summary in the Washington Post:
"Watching the Australian film 'Jindabyne,' one soon embraces the conclusion: Robert Altman did this work better. And with fewer brush strokes.
"'Jindabyne' transmogrifies a Raymond Carver short story into an epic that involves a waterlogged cadaver, a lot of angry Aborigines and a central character (played by Laura Linney) who seems to have more in common with a Sally Field-type heroine than with the tortured souls you encounter in Carverdom."
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