Jindabyne 2006

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: An affecting character study, anchored by scraped-bare and often heartbreaking performances by Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Jindabyne is wonderfully acted by Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne, two first-rate performers working close to the bone and concerned foremost with making an audience understand their characters, as opposed to merely liking them. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Scene by scene, Jindabyne has dramatic force, but it's an awfully long slog. Carver's smartest tactic was never outstaying his welcome. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Too many extraneous elements have been added but at the movie's center lies the knotty story of a marriage poisoned by amorality. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Jindabyne started with a bad idea and the finished film doesn't do well by it, despite the presence of Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne and several excellent Australian actors. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: The frustration here is that none of this leads anywhere. Perhaps that is the point, that some mysteries are never solved, but Jindabyne could give us a little more to work with. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The resolution Jindabyne eventually offers feels small and safe. The movie goes out with a whimper. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: We live on the fault line along with these characters, and it is an experience that is not easy to shake off. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Such is the inherent power of the Carver material that Jindabyne rises above its polemics. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: The movie's remaining revelations build slowly into a set of surprisingly powerful emotional beats. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Jindabyne can't contain all that the filmmakers want to throw in. Best to keep glued to the taut performance by Laura Linney as Claire, wife of one of the fishermen (Gabriel Byrne) and a woman moved to dramatic acts of atonement. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: It's hard not to admire the film's confidence in making the story its own, and Ms. Linney, a mix of iron will and emotional fragility, delivers her usual complex performance. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Jindabyne wears its class politics lightly, weaving them into a ghost story about the intimate connection between how we treat our living and our dead that will hover around your shoulders long after you leave the theater. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: For all its roiling tensions, Jindabyne is an oddly antiseptic, even repressed, experience. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Gabriel Byrne is the fisherman who won't interrupt his trip; Laura Lin ney is the wife who finds his actions hard and, finally, horrifying to comprehend. And for the most part it works. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Linney, in particular, is heartbreaking. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: The film is two plodding hours of people abusing themselves, their livers, a corpse, each other and even small animals. Most abused of all is the audience. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Jindabyne requires patience, but the payoff is rewarding. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: A fish tale worth telling and worth hearing. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: [Director] Lawrence's compelling little film pursues a deep question: why people make the choices that they do - and how they then live with those decisions, right or wrong, weak or strong. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The result is a mature and challenging motion picture, and something that will stick with viewers after the screen has gone dark. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Intelligent, superbly acted and finely observed, but Jindabyne suffers from too many extraneous elements and from a story that doesn't land with enough force or purpose. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Teresa Budasi, Chicago Sun-Times: Though Linney is the standout, short-shrift should not be given to the rest of the cast, whose roles might be smaller but they're the ones who add a little color to this otherwise dreary vista. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: There's something dreadfully wrong when the picture shows signs of completely misunderstanding, or choosing to ignore, the dead moral centre of Carver's story. Why, then, bother to adapt it? Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Easy to admire but considerably harder to enjoy. Read more

Cliff Doerksen, Time Out: Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: The seamless overall blend of involving domestic turmoil and haunted national self-questioning is quite some achievement. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Jindabyne ends up shushing itself out of any emotional wallop. Restraint is a necessity if you're trying to express Carver's singular voice, but there's a difference between being quietly devastating and muting your narrative to death. Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: Jindabyne never obtains the full impact of its potentially powerful inner core. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: A soberly, if sluggishly, crafted movie in which the bitterness never stops. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Clearly, in his bid to repurpose Carver's story, Lawrence misses the writer's prevailing ethos: the sense of self-contained internal misery and that haunting quality of being hopelessly human. Read more