Something to watch tonight: Jindabyne

Going through 20-year-old pages for the birth­day cel­eb­ra­tion last week, I real­ised there is still plenty of gold to be mined – as long as those films are actu­ally avail­able somewhere.

I’m pleased to report that – for loc­al audi­ences at least – Jindabyne is on an access­ible stream­er. I reviewed it in December 2006.

Raymond Carver’s 1981 short story “So Much Water, So Close To Home” has already been adap­ted for two near-masterpieces: a seg­ment of Altman’s awe­some Short Cuts in 1993 and Paul Kelly’s 1989 song “Everything’s Turning To White”. Now we can add the third (and best) item to the list, Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne.

The story is decept­ively simple. Four guys go on a fish­ing trip and dis­cov­er the body of a murdered girl. Instead of report­ing it they decide to carry on fish­ing. The com­munity is hor­ri­fied and one of the wives (Laura Linney) real­ises that she can nev­er see her hus­band (Gabriel Byrne) in the same way again.

Screenwriter Beatrix Christian takes the already highly-charged story to anoth­er level by mak­ing the dead girl a “black­fella” and Byrne and Linney’s cent­ral couple out­siders, immig­rants from Ireland and America respectively.

But the film isn’t so much about polit­ics or “issues” as it is about char­ac­ter, and there is a rich­ness and depth to every por­trait that we don’t get blessed with too often in the cinema. Jindabyne isn’t an easy watch but it is cer­tainly rewarding.

Also in that Capital Times column: one of my favour­ite Stathams, Crank; Keisha Castle-Hughes brings forth the Messiah in The Nativity Story; Unaccompanied Minors is a funny Christmas film; and Deck the Halls is not.

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Where to watch Jindabyne

Aotearoa: Streaming on Prime Video

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video or HBO Max

Canada: Digital purchase

Ireland: Not cur­rently avail­able online

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Digital rental

UK: Digital rental