Film Review: Jindabyne

This film attempts to tackle many dramatic subjects through its characters. Each character is given a painstakingly realised story and background, both of which are often viewed only through small actions and occasional dialogue. More to the point, every main character is interconnected with all the others, as you would expect with an ensemble piece. This style is executed beautifully in the first half of the film, although there is the odd sidestep into the horror genre, seeming out of place at first, but this does have a positive impact on the film.

However most of the build up that the first half provides is thrown away in the second half. Other characters fall to the wayside as the two main characters, Stewart Kane (Played marvellously by Gabriel Byrne) and Claire Kane (A so-so performance by Laura Linney), focus on their marriage and their personal feelings over the murder of the young aboriginal woman Stewart and his friends find in the mountains.

the end result feels a bit preachy and pushy, a stark contrast to the open first half felt that gave you the chance to form your own opinions as you understood the issues of the various characters

What follows is a drama of race issues, especially in relation to white Australian–Aboriginal relations. What irritated me as a viewer was the single minded desire to push this issue forward through the main characters, meaning that other characters were partially ignored. There were some characters I felt could have been expanded on, such as recently-orphaned Caylin-Calandria (Eva Lazzaro), without removing too much from the central film. As such the end result feels a bit preachy and pushy, a stark contrast to the open first half felt that gave you the chance to form your own opinions as you understood the issues of the various characters.

The performances by the cast are by and large very strong with Gabriel Byrne giving a memorable performance, however, Laura Linney fails to go that extra mile and didn’t seem connected to her character. Direction in this case was adequate, there were some very good moments and the opening sequence was unexpected and very well done. However sometime it did feel like a ‘paint-by-numbers’ film where there was the overuse of scene transition fade outs and wide sweeping shoots. The film could have been speeded up by cutting down on some of these and increased the pace which was frankly shockingly slow in places.

This is a film with some good cast performances and adequate direction, but the excellent first half is wasted by the actions and focus of the second half. It felt slow at times and I left feeling neutral about the entire experience. A film that could have been, and should have been, better than this.