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.
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.