Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

craig-hopton The movie had a really good concept. It's about race division in Australia, but more importantly it's an exploration of how a small, innocent decision (not immediately reporting a murdered body) can turn out to look malicious and divisive in hindsight, and the repercussions this can cause.My problem with this Jindabyne is that these themes were kind of taken over by the focus on the lead female character Claire and her mental and emotional issues, which didn't really work for me.There's also a very bizarre subplot where the movie shows you the movements of the murderer but this never seems to lead to anything. It creates an air of menace at first but then just becomes rather pointless. The police don't seem to have any leads to follow and so the opportunity of this becoming an engaging crime-detective drama comes to nothing.I may have just missed the point of this movie but it didn't do it for me.

guyau-399-68372 It's been a while since I've seen this movie, but it deserves a review for highlighting all that's wrong with the Australian film industry. To make a movie in Australia, you all but have to obtain government film funding, which is decided by bureaucrats that prove the old adage: those that can, do, those that can't become film bureaucrats. These depressed, politically correct, failed filmmakers, a product of government-backed film schools that churn out thousands of like-minded confrères, favour social realism and fund topics such as drug addiction, domestic violence, racial intolerance and rural horror. Hence the litany of depressing, ugly portraits of Australia, which are to tourism what cyanide is to fine dining.Jindabyne is typically ponderous and depressing. It highlights feminist and indigenous themes, a prerequisite for funding it seems, culminating in ludicrously irrelevant scenes of traditional Aboriginal mourning. Saddest of all, this was hailed at the time as a pinnacle of Australian cinema, the critics as delusional as the government-suckled film industry. The public voted with its box office dollars, and largely avoided this movie, along with most of the dreary drivel produced in the last, lost decade of Australian filmmaking.So, I'd avoid this movie and see Robert Altman's Short Cuts. Not even an original plot line, Jindabyne is based on a Raymond Carver short story, which Short Cuts handles infinitely better.

gig1964 Forget that this film has too many metaphors and undeveloped subplots. Yes, it's flawed. But it effectively conveys the feeling of guilt and human powerlessness to the viewer. Perhaps the biggest flaw in the movie lies in the two children's relationship (Tom and Caylin-Calandria). It's muddy and a bit far-fetched. But the rest of the film works brilliantly and, of course, some great acting by Byrne and Linney don't hurt the cause. The cinematography is also top-notch. That so much is unresolved is also the point of the film - life doesn't give us the answers and we have to face the consequences of our actions.

roukee Starts with great promise about the story of a town now gone and a new town replacing it. The old town is now under water and there are references to zombies by first the father and then friend of the little Tom. The children (Caylin-Calandria) in the film display a lot of crazy behaviou r for no real good reason. One explanation for all of this is to set the scene - but this film, in cinematic terms, is clearly not a thriller and more of an emotional/psychological drama of people who are already mired by problems, having to deal with more.We see elaborate character building in the film and sometimes it is overdone, especially of characters who are not involved in the main plot. There were too many unanswered questions. Why didn't Stewart and his friends worry about their families back home with a killer loose? Why didn't one or two of them get back to the car and call the police? The film then drags on for a bit and ends with more questions. Why does the murderer chase Claire? Why does he watch the funeral? Beautiful symbolisms and the beautiful Australian landscape make for a haunting movie. Really good acting by all actors, more so by Gabriel Byrne who had me completely convinced that reporting that he'd found a dead body four days too late wasn't really their fault.The beautiful song sung by Susan's (Tatea Reilly) sister Ursula Yovich and her superb acting, bought a tear to my eye.Being a lover of stories with a certain amount of structure, Jindabyne left me unsatisfied.