"So much water so close to home, why did he have to go miles away to fish." Raymond Carver from his short story So Much Water So Close To Home
The Australian film Jindabyne was adapted from Carver's story by director Ray Lawrence and written by Beatrix Christian. It stars Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne and was filmed on location in New South Wales. I had watched it on my own many months back and was giving serious thought as to whether it would be suited for the blog..About a week later my mother who you all know as 'Silver' (formerly 'Bitsie') called and told me she had just watched a really interesting movie that she thought would be "perfect" for the blog. Yep, it was Jindabyne! She had a lot of good points to make and also had some questions she wanted to ask our contributors. Instead of my immediate thoughts here I am going to give mom the floor to get the ball rolling. Mom?:
(where's mom? She was supposed to have e-mailed me her questions but alas, they have not yet arrived. Dearest Silver ,like myself, tends to leave things to the very last second. Well, she has till six tonite....)
Ahh, she has written! And it's only 2:30. Well done Mom!
"No critique can be made of this movie until we decide if the premise is plausible.
Gentlemen, I need your input. I know that I would have been down that hill in thirty seconds flat.
However, women are very emotional. Is it possible that a group of intelligent, responsible men would really continue to fish under those conditions? Come on guys, help me out here. Question to everyone, is it possible that race or class was a motivating factor? "
Silver
Good questions Silver. The bottom line is she's not sure she buys the premise. Anybody?
23 comments:
Silver, Good questions, but hard to know how to answer. Given that this film, Jindabyne, was based on perhaps the best known of all the short stories of Raymond Carver, one of the true masters of this genre in recent generations, and a story which formerly served as the lynchpin of Robert Altman’s Carverfest, the great Shortcuts, are we answering with respect only to this particular film or the storyline as a whole?
In the larger sense, I’d have to answer, yes, depending on the individuals involved and the particular circumstances it would be possible for a group of men to fish in this situation. While cognizant of the fact that any generalization involving nearly half the world’s population is going to be problematic at best, nonetheless, overall men do tend more often to approach situations less with their emotions and more with a rational problem solver mentality. Any woman who has ever gotten upset with her husband or boyfriend after trying to talk to him about a problem at work, with her family or anything else because instead of listening and being supportive he has, instead, offered a plan to remedy the situation will know what I’m talking about. The man is actually trying to help in the only way he knows how. If there’s a problem, you fix it, like a car. You don’t talk about it; what good does that do? And so, of course, the man will never comprehend why his wife or girlfriend is angry at him when all he did was try to help. Meanwhile the woman will never fathom why he insisted on telling her what to do instead of giving her what she actually wanted and needed. In this case it is not difficult for me to imagine a group of men prioritizing their options and coming finally to the conclusion that any alternatives were ultimately trumped by the oft repeated refrain, “but she was already dead!” Giving up the one bright spot in their lives was not going to bring the dead girl back to life, was not, in fact, going to change one single thing where she was concerned. So, they tie her up to keep her from floating away, go about their business, and when they’re finished alert the authorities. Logical, sensible, rational. Now, that said, I am not endorsing these actions. That wasn’t the question. You asked if it were possible for a group of men to behave in this way, and I believe any man who is honest would acknowledge this to be the case. Even if he knows he would not, he has known men who would.
Where the specific film, Jindabyne, is concerned I’d have to give a different answer. In this case no, I do not believe the premise is believable. Carver’s story was written before the era of cell phones, and even at the time Shortcuts was made they were not something any of the men involved owned. This is actually discussed in Shortcuts when the men sit down to talk about what they should do. Also, in both Shortcuts and Carver’s original story the men were both farther from home and farther into the backcountry. In Jindabyne they’re just not that far away, and they have cell phones. In this situation “male” logic would have certainly dictated a different scenario: drawing straws perhaps to see which one of them would hike back to the car and drive far enough to be able to phone the police on their mobile. It is also unlikely any of these men would have been stupid enough to touch the body, not in this era of DNA evidence – something mentioned specifically in Jindabyne. One would also hope they would have considered that the sooner the murder was discovered, the body recovered, the better the chance of finding her murderer, especially given that they lived in a small community and had wives, girlfriends, children and grandchildren of their own. And if nothing else, they would surely have recognized that an apparently “fresh” body, touched by them repeatedly, tied up, and not reported for a couple days would inevitably lead to their being considered prime suspects in her murder. Self preservation ultimately trumps all other priorities for both men and women, and these men were certainly intelligent enough to realize their actions could be endangering their own. Actually they should have been considered suspects. Why they were not, and more, why the police appeared to have no real interest in who was guilty of the murder is simply one more of the many things about this movie that did not make sense.
As to race or class making a difference? The answer here is a very simple “no.” While the murdered girl’s kinfolk understandably view the men’s actions in this light, there is no evidence whatever in the film that race was a motivating factor at all. Carl’s granddaughter, Caylin-Calandria, was, after all, clearly part native, as was Rocco’s girlfriend, Carmel. Although Claire accuses Stewart of behaving as he did because the girl was not “white,” she also implies he would have acted differently if the victim had been male, both accusations ultimately the product of her own hysteria rather than anything we know about either Stewart or the other men. Truth is, the whole black-white subplot was one of many additions to the original story I did not like. It’s not that I believe a film based on a literary work needs to follow that original story slavishly. In fact, most of the time that makes for a bad movie. However, in this case the original story which had to do with the differences between men and women, their difficulties in communicating, and ultimately the unraveling of a marriage – and was told from Claire’s point of view – simply disappears under the weight of all the pointless subplots thrown into Jindabyne. Neither the race nor sex of the murder victim had anything to do with why the men acted as they did, so why even make an issue of it? And the whole Caylin-Calandria character? What on earth is the point there? Or Tom and his “lesbian” girlfriend? And when the two of them take off – and as a former owner of an auto repair shop myself I know what it means to have someone leave you in the lurch with no notice whatsoever – Stewart never berates Tom, treats him civilly and pays him off in full even when Tom tells him it’s not necessary – and then we’re supposed to see Stewart as a bad guy because he doesn’t also shake his hand? Why? And why make Claire a victim of serious mental illness? Not just because that’s not part of Carver’s story; what’s the point? A story about a couple failing to communicate, about a marriage breaking down is one thing. Making one of them certifiable, adding in the whole fear of having another child business not only turns it into something completely different, but in this case undercuts even the remotest connection with the original. Why then make the movie at all? And why show the murderer lifting the cover off the dead girls car if nothing is ever going to come of it? Why is it a problem for Claire to attend the ceremony for the victim, but the murderer’s presence – also white -- is alright? Actually, why show the murderer at all when ultimately he isn’t part of the real story anyway? And that ending? Absolutely the worst tacked on, utterly unbelievable “resolution” to a film I can recall seeing in a long long time. And on top of everything else, even with all the additions the central action that sets everything else in motion is still the behavior of the men upon finding the girls body. Why then is this film so singularly uninterested in why they acted as they did. Amidst all the totally unnecessary scenes and characters one absolutely critical scene which was missing was a meeting of the men to seriously discuss what to do about the body and why. This not only should have been in the film, it should have been – like the scene in Deliverance where the men discuss what to do about the body, or the scene in Shortcuts for that matter – a pivotal moment. But instead, it’s just missing. Ultimately this film is no more interested in these men’s motivations that the local police in catching the actual killer. And now I think I better stop! I’m sure there will be plenty of contrasting opinions on this film. I look forward to reading them. Bottom line for me is that I felt the director, in his efforts to flesh out Carver’s very short short story, added so many extraneous characters, issues and subplots that in the end any possible meaning or significance was muddied into invisibility. The ending, I felt, was simply a confirmation of that fact. Even the director could no longer figure out where he was going with all this and so instead of an ending, just finally stops it all with this horrible PC black-white reconciliation ceremony that doesn’t fit, doesn’t work and doesn’t make sense. Now, let the battle begin!
It would be hard to add much more after reading Oldman's comments, as I have to say I am on the same page with most of what he says and he says a lot!
The only thing I'm not sure about is the issue with the cellphones. From my memory, and I may well have it wrong, there was some mention of the fact that there was no cellphone coverage where they were which would seem realistic to me based on my own experiences of losing signals when I travel hiking, camping etc. Does anyone else recall the details about this? BEcause certainly if they could have simply made a call from where they were the whole movie makes no sense!
Hi OLDMAN,
SORRY TO TAKE SO LONG GETTING BACK TO YOU. 'THE SEASON' YOU KNOW. THANKYOU FOR YOUR DEATAILED RESPONSE TO MY QUESTIONS.
PRETTY MUCH KNEW YOU WOULD SAY THAT. WE ARE VENUS AND MARS, ARE WE NOT.
AGREE ON ALL THE EXTRANEOUS STUFF,BUT HE REALLY HAD TO FILL IN THE SPACES
OR THE FILM WOULD HAVE BEEN OVER VERY QUICKLY.
NOT ONE OF MY FAVORITES BUT I DO THINK IT MAKES FOR AN INTERESTING CONVERSATION.
JIMMY, YOU ARE RIGHT ,THE CELL PHONE DID NOT WORK,BUT HE COULD HAVE GONE DOWN THE HILL.
A VERY HEATHY AND HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON TO ALL {ALL===LETS HERE FROM YOU!}
SILVER
Oldman -
Your comments were spot-on regarding what the movie DIDN'T tell us. The DVD has "deleted scenes" where we find that on the first night of their trip there was a general desire to leave first thing in the morning, but that Carl's busted ankle would be a problem. How this turned into "let's enjoy our trip anyway" is the crux of the film, and something that is left to our imagination.
To do my share of generalizing about the sexes: Mature men would realize that by delaying their return they interfered with the murder investigation, put the girl's famly through unnecessary grief, put themsleves in danger of being suspects and subjects of scorn. Immature men would have just pushed the body down stream and said nothing. Stuart and friends (like most of us) lie somewhere inbetween.
My next question for the director: Why did you make Lucy (the murder victim) look more European than any of the other native women in the film? Was this done to gain sympathy with a mostly white audience? And why show us that the killer has kept her car? What did he do with it? What did he do with that plate he took off it?
So many many questions....
We just finished watching and I wanted to quickly respond to Jimmy's inquiry regarding the cellphone. THere is a very clear reference to the lack of cellphone reception when they park their car at the head of the trail. Stuart tells Billy that there will be no coverage during their trip.
Great dialogue so far every one!.
David,
I couldn't agree more where Tatea Reilly, the victim, is concerned. The film shows us both her parents, her sister, 3 aunts and 3 cousins, and she doesn't look remotely related to any of them. Making an issue of the victim being a native girl and then using an actress who -- unlike every other member of her "family" -- does not look particularly "native" but is, on the other hand, quite beautful seemed such a Hollywood touch I thought to mention it in my earlier post but figured I'd already been hard enough on Jindabyne. Truth is, what bothered me even more was the director's decision to have Stewart flip the dead girls body over in the river. I enjoy a little gratuitous nudity as much as the next guy generally, but to me this scene was as offensive as it was unnecessary. Nothing we know about Stewart suggests he is either stupid or twisted enough to handle a dead girl's body without cause. So why include this scene at all? Are we really supposed to be appalled by the men's actions, sympathetic to the victim not because she is merely murdered but because we get to see her naked breasts? I hope not. And if we're supposed to believe that displaying the victim in this vulnerable state is intended by the director to increase our sense of outrage, our disgust with the men's callousness, I personally found myself reacting more to the apparent cynicism of the director himself. Notwithstanding Claire's accusations, the men's actions had nothing to do with either the race or sex of the victim. The same cannot be said of the director. Had the victim been male would we have been treated to the same peepshow?
David, I like how you were able to distinguish the 'mature' men vs the 'immature' ones so precisely. Surely these four guys do fall somewhere in the middle.
Oldman and David's point about the strangely anglo looking Aboriginal woman is accurate as well.
One obscure and undeveloped detail(among many) we noticed was when the killer removes a platewith a 'P' on it from the front of the stolen car. What was that meant to reference?
We are going to go back and re-read the original Carver story this week and will post again.
Lee, we are pleased to see that you've moved to a one film per month schedule. This allows for us to take more time to watch ,digest, re-watch, read all the comments, re-evaluate and share our responses.
Hello! I love this blog!
The 'Key' is quite useful. Might it be better to list the abreviations as ACRONYMS instead?
Welcome JILLfromJP~
Thanks for the suggestion regarding acronyms. I'm wondering what other people think about this?
Awaiting opinions......EOS!
Had the victim been a male we certainly would NOT be subjected to the 'peepshow'.
And the director's choice to have her look so TOTALLY different than her family was downright foolish. Tskk tsssk.
Despite many obvious flaws I did like the movie. Maybe because I always find Gabriel Byrne engaging and believable. (another candidate for the infamous "It's Raining Men" club?).
As to changing ABBREVIATIONS to ACRONYMS my vote is to keep it as is.
Jill, does the JP stand for Jamaica Plain?
"Let the battle begin!", as Oldman so aptly puts it. And there is a battle going on in this film, mainly the director's own battle to figure out what the hell he is trying to say! Like Lee Paris I myself love watching anything Gabriel Byrne does and though this film is befuddled and filled with the GMAB factor once again his performance does not disappoint. And the discussion here was worth spending the two hours anyway, as always!
What we have here is a movie that started its life as a "men can't comunicate" and "men can be self-centered" story. Somewhere along the way it changed into a "white men are coarse and selfish; if only they would act like their wives wanted them to everything would be OK" story. Since the men do not communicate well they have nothing to defend them except this: unless their whole society is fucked they would not be seen as rather ordinary guys by the community - their shops would be boycotted, their wies would leave them, their girlfriends would flee in terror. I am frustrated that a movie that could have sparked much discussion about the different ways the men could have handled a bad situation (with a white vs black subtext thrown in) was turned into a tirade against white men.
For fun, lets make it an anti-woman tirade:
Claire: You are a text-book white well-off liberal do-gooder with a guilt complex. Why else would you violate the privacy of the victim and her family by viewing the body and pushing yourself (several times) into the lives of the mourning family?
CC's grandmother: I suppose you are doing the best you can, but you are denying your grand daughter real emotional help because of...what? - a misguided sense of pride?
Carmel - Thanks for having real questions to ask. To bad you didn't get enough screen-time to be fully heard, or have your questions answered.
"The Lesbian:" You and your guy are in that part of life when running off from adventure to adventure is a good thing to do. Good luck. You might want to consider ditching this guy, though- he talks about you way too much when he's with his buddies.
Stuart's Mother: You are a 2 dimensional, right-out-of-the-comics mother-in-law. I'm glad Calire smashed your vase.
Girl Singing at Funeral: If the dead girl wrote it I guess it's OK to share, but please put that ultra-sappy love song in the bottom drawer.
Some feedback to soem of the male characters:
(Since the BIG question- "why didnt you report the girl to the police as soon as possible" I have to resort to asking the smaller ones.)
Stuart: You are a f'ing jerk for apologizing to the girl's father the way you did. What are you, 5 years old? But I'm glad you showed up - it means your marraige has hope.
Murderer: Stop being so creepy. And stop intimidating women you have no intention of killing- it draws attention to you.
Victim's Dad - Bravo! Throwing dirt in Stuart's face was a very powerful and direct expression of your contempt. Let's hope the youngsters (including the white men present) learn from your example.
1. Original Carver Story: LLI
2. Shortcuts: LEM
3. Jindabyne: OKBNG many moments of GMAB (especially that last song Breather refers to...)
Oldman was kind enough to provide me with the following link to an online version of the Carver short story. I thought some of you might be interested as well:
http://www.nyx.net/~kbanker/chautauqua/carver.htm
The last three letters in the link are htm.
He notes that this was the first published version (1981) and was heavily edited by the publisher (Knopf) from its original( 25 pages down to 10 pages!) He suggests that anyone interested try to find a collection which includes the original version.
Welcome to 'andover' and 'Marked Man'. I really appreciate people using the KEY.
Breather, your intensity never ceases to amaze me. I'm glad Claire smashed the vase too. The mother was almost as aggravating as the final song..
Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy Holidays, everyone!!!
Happy Holidays Cherry and everyone. Thanks to Oldman for the link to the story. It did seem to be bare bones and I am searching for the longer version. It should be interesting to compare the two. The film certainly does not depict Claire's personality as written.
I haven't read the Carver story or seen Shortcuts. In answer to you Silver, I did find the premise believable. I don't think that the men acted in the best way that they could, to say the least, under the circumstances. Still, they were not evil, only human. I felt compassion for them throughout the film as everyone around them made them out to be the villains and seemed to forget totally about the killer, including the victim's family. It did seem to me to be a bit of the old "kill the messenger" syndrome.
Very well put Chatty Kathy. I had many of the same reactions as you. It was very strange that NO ONE seemed to care who the killer was. It was as if the group of men were actually responsible for her death, not merely finding her body.
Happy New Year, everyone!!!
Thanks for the holiday wishes.
On so many levels and for so many people this has been a tough year, to put it mildly. Let's keep our fingers crossed that things will begin to change, albeit slowly, for the better.
We have really enjoyed spending time with all of you over the last 12 months since FOTBP began and we look forward to many more wondrous films and discussions in the coming year!
Yes, Kate and Jim, this certainly has been a tough year for the world in general. We all have such high hopes for our new president but I am concerned that he will be hard pressed to fulfill everyone's fervored expectations. Let's all wish him the best of luck in what shall be one hell of a challenge.
This has indeed been a great year as far as spending time hanging out with all of you movie lovers and I do look forward to many many more of our grand discussions. Thank you so much to every one who wrote (and read) and brought one of MY dreams to fruition. I am ever grateful for your interest.
I wish you health and contentment in the coming year.
Hi Silver. To answer your original question, yes. I do totally buy the premise. In fact, I can't imagine why so many people thought it was far fetched(sp?). It's not the best movie I've ever seen but I am glad that I watched it. Oldman and Breather and David are all very articulate and I haven't much to add. Lee, will you be adding more of your photos? I love what you have up so far. I recognize the DeCOrdova winter stuff. This is a unique website. I'll be back!
Well, I just watched _Jindabyne_ yesterday and just read everyone's wonderful comments just now. My goodness.
Uh, let's see. I thought the scenery in this film was stunning. This film for some reason made me more nervous than any other film on this blog to date. I think it was the film music. For whatever reason, I could never relax through the whole thing because even normal actions had this kind of unsettling music accompanying them. Like my impression is the camera would pan to one or another of the actors, and the music would be the equivalent of "ohmygod ohmygod something's going to happen AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" and sometimes something would happen, and sometimes nothing would, and overall I burned a lot of calories worrying during the film, cued by all the music.
I haven't read the Carver short story yet. I admire his work, and I think his writing teacher John Gardner was one of the great American geniuses of the last century. What was also strange was that I've seen _Short Cuts_ twice, once probably in the theater when it came out and once relatively recently with my boyfriend, and I still can't remember that this story was in there. I showed the dvd cover of _Jindabyne_ to my boyfriend, and he said, "I've seen this movie already," and I said, "No you haven't," and he said the storyline was in some other movie we watched, which turned out to be _Short Cuts_, as confirmed by oldman. Even after having seen _Jindabyne_, I still can't remember that part of _Short Cuts_. No doubt it'd be interesting to puzzle out why. No doubt my boyrfriend and I'll be watching _Short Cuts_ in the near future.
As to silver's question of the credibility of the premise of _Jindabyne_ and oldman's point about cell phone coverage, I don't know, I didn't find the premise hard to believe. There are a lot of things in life that happen because they just sort of happen. There are also certainly a lot of things that happen in group decision-making that don't happen with individuals. Sort of like the difference between playing with a Ouija board in a group and playing with one alone. Add in some beer and some beautiful nature and being, uh, decontextualized from normal life -- no families, no civilization, on vacation -- no doubt meanings could start to fuzz out without normal things like other people and police stations and ready cell phone connectivity to frame a normal person's sense of normal reality. Especially something as jarring and bizarre and beyond normal comprehension as finding a dead body in a river. I suppose all the guy things mentioned in this discussion could lend men more easily toward this situation than women, but I could see it happening to anyone, really, not just men.
I've only seen Laura Linney in a few films; I've loved her performances each time. Certainly in this film also. Uh, for me her reaction and the rest of the film was about carrying other people's shadows. It reminded me of a parable that I'd read in Robert Johson's _Owning Your Own Shadow_. I found a paraphrase of it off of Google at www.bsec.org/reference/bsec/newsletter/files/June%202007%20Issue.pdf:
In Jungian therapist Robert Johnson’s short book outlining the role of a shadow identity in the human psyche, he tells a story of a Japanese Buddhist priest accused by local villagers of making a young woman pregnant. The young woman in question had a boyfriend, but afraid for his safety, she had told the elders confronting her that it was the village priest who brought her to this condition. She helped her boyfriend leave the village with a story of going to the city to find work. A delegation of villagers went to the priest’s hut and finding him working in the garden confronted him with the young woman’s story and shame. The priest listened quietly to the accusations. He then said “Ah so” and returned to his work. The villagers spread far and wide the story of the rogue priest who had violated his vows and a young woman’s purity. They whispered behind their hands from a distance and either castigated or shunned the priest when they crossed his path. Whenever the subject was raised to him, the priest would listen and nod slowly, saying “Ah so” and nothing more. Some years went by. At long last the young man who had fled the village around the time of the young woman’s pregnancy, returned and came with the young woman to the priest’s hut. The couple confessed the lies he had told her family and the village, recounting the true role of the young man, and asked the priest’s forgiveness. “Ah so” said the priest and smiled. Later, as the village elders found out the truth and reflected upon the considerable wrong done to the priest, a delegation came to his hut. He was working in the garden and when they told him of what they had learned, he said, quietly, “Ah so.”
In the case of the parable above, supposedly the priest had his own shadow in balance so he could carry the shadows of the young couple and the entire village without feeling the need to fight back or break down. And supposedly these things happen all the time just because of the structure of our psyches. There's a disjunct between the ego (what we're all comfortable with within ourselves) and our shadow (what we can't stand about ourselves) so we do things like project our shadows onto other people and are quick to despise in other people what we can't deal with inside our own selves.
And I think that's what happened to the men in _Jindabyne_. Claire unleashed her shadow onto her own husband, whom arguably she should have been supporting through the whole ordeal. The whole town scapegoated the four men. It was a bit like killing the messenger, as Chatty Kathy pointed out. Claire's reaction was understandable--it would have taken a very uncommon person to react otherwise. But like Chatty Kathy and Lee, I sympathized with Stewart. He was unlucky and the victim of the ever-precariousness human shadow-projection that is part and parcel with the human condition and just a part of being alive and living in society and having to get along with other people from day to day.
Lee, I certainly thought of you and your tank friends during this movie. A lot of footage of fish in varying stages of life and death.
As for the abbreviation/acronym suggestion, JILLfromJP is technically correct. I never thought about it before, but an abbreviation is a shortened form of a word, and everything in the Key on this blog is strictly speaking an acronym except for "DOC," which is the sole abbreviation if I'm not mistaken. Go, Jill!
I guess the only other thing I'd think to mention about this film is the character of Caylin-Calandria. She scared the freaking nuts out of me. If I had a child like that within a dead cat's throw of anywhere even near my purview, my blood would turn to cottage cheese and my hair would curl. The girl killed the class pet. For freak's sake. She induced another innocent kid to help her do it. oldman, you asked what the point of her character was. I can see why you asked. But then again, if we wanted to pursue this further, I'm sure someone could easily base a whole discussion on evil in this movie, and the treatment of the four men, of the murderer, and of Caylin-Calandria in the storyline. I don't believe in evil, but if it ever came to light that it does really exist and that there is a Satan, Caylin-Calandria would be the first kid I'd look up. My gosh. I thought the girl who played her did a great job.
OK. I think that's it for the minute. Congratulations and Happy First Blog Anniversary, Lee! It's been a really interesting and wonderful year with everyone. Very much look forward to more of the same.
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