AustLit logo

AustLit

image of person or book cover 1925703815652610203.jpg
Screen cap from promotional trailer
form y separately published work icon Jindabyne single work   film/TV   thriller   crime   mystery  
Adaptation of So Much Water So Close To Home Raymond Carver , 1977 single work short story
Issue Details: First known date: 2006... 2006 Jindabyne
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The story of a murder and a marriage. A powerful and original film about the things that haunt us.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 2/8/2013)

Notes

  • As Nathanael O'Reilly points out in 'Joining the Dots: Paul Kelly Sings About Place', there is a complex inter-relationship between American writer Raymond Carver, this film, and musician Paul Kelly.

    Raymond Carver's short story 'So Much Water So Close to Home' appeared in 1977 as part of the collection Furious Seasons.

    In 1989 (a year after Carver's death), Paul Kelly (then working as Paul Kelly and the Messengers) released the album So Much Water So Close to Home, which took its title from Carver's short story. The album included the song 'Everything's Turning to White', which was explicitly based on 'So Much Water So Close to Home'.

    In 2006, Paul Kelly co-wrote the score for Jindabyne, which is an adaptation of Carver's story.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Dangerous Locations : The Missing Person in Australian Cinema Dean Biron , Tiffany Sutherland , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Screen Education , no. 95 2019; (p. 64-71)
Jindabyne and the Apology : Intercultural Relations, Violence, Ethics, and the Precarious State PDF 61-88 of Reconciliation in Australian Cinema Kerstin Knoph , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Zeitschrift Für Australienstudien , no. 30 2016; (p. 61-88)

'The Australian film Jindabyne (dir. Ray Lawrence, 2006) opens with a blurry shot of dry grasslands and a string of barbed wire in sharp focus horizontally across the screen (Fig. 1). The shot runs for 32 seconds before the camera tilts up, bringing into focus both the grassland and a cluster of huge boulders on a hill in the background – all in one take, no cut. Next the camera shows a pick-up truck, motor idling, with an older non-Aboriginal man behind the wheel hiding behind the rocks – the murderer of an Aboriginal woman, as we will learn later – followed by an extreme high angle long shot of the dry landscape below the hill where a car is approaching. Shots inside the car present a young Aboriginal woman, happily driving, while intercutting shows the man leaving his hide-out to intercept her.' (Introduction)

Joining the Dots : Paul Kelly Sings About Place Nathanael O'Reilly , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Telling Stories : Australian Life and Literature 1935–2012 2013; (p. 425-430)
Adaptation for the Postcolonial Community : Jindabyne’s Contested Spaces Renate Brosch , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Anglia : Zeitschrift fur Englische Philologie , October vol. 130 no. 3 2012; (p. 364–377)
'In this article, I discuss the Australian film Jindabyne, an adaptation of Raymond Carver's short story "So Much Water So Close to Home". Starting from the premise of contemporary adaptation studies, that such remediations should not be judged on the basis of fidelity to the literary source, I argue that the achievement of Jindabyne lies in its very deviations from the text. By transporting the story to an Australian setting, the film introduces the issue of interracial relations into the narrative and thus adds a postcolonial dimension to the story. Instead of focusing on individual psychology and the marital problems of a couple, the film shifts the focus to the social effects of the denial of historical culpability on the part of white Australians. I investigate the techniques and strategies which produce interest in a small-town community burdened with the continuing heritage of colonial injustice, especially the film's use of visual images as a means of transnational appeal. Images of borders and border-crossings express its engagement with interracial proximity and conflict. In my response-oriented interpretation I hope to show how the movie succeeds in enlisting the participation of viewers and uniting them into a temporary "imaginary community" with a postcolonial agenda.' Renate Brosch.
Reconciliation and the History Wars in Australian Cinema Felicity Collins , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Exhuming Passions : The Pressure of the Past in Ireland and Australia 2012; (p. 207-222)
'When The Proposition ( a UK/Australia co-production, directed by John Hillcoat and scripted by Nick Cave) was released in 2005, film reviewers had no qualms about claiming this spectacular saga of colonial violence on the Queensland frontier as a 'history' film. A reviewer on BBC Radio 4 described The Proposition as 'a bushranger Western...set in violent 1880s Australian outback exposing the bitter racial tensions between English and Irish settlers. A Sunday Times review declared that 'Australia's brutal post-colonial history is stripped of all the lies in a bloody clash of cultures between the British police, the Irish bushrangers and the Aborigines.' Foregrounding the film's revisionist spectacle of colonial violence, an Australian reviewer predicted that, despite 'scenes of throat-cutting torture, rape and exploding heads...The Proposition could be the most accurate look at our national history yet'. (Author's introduction, 207)
Beneath the Sublime Sky Sandra Hall , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 15-16 July 2006; (p. 15)

— Review of Jindabyne Beatrix Christian , 2006 single work film/TV
Haunted by History Evan Williams , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 22-23 July 2006; (p. 22)

— Review of Jindabyne Beatrix Christian , 2006 single work film/TV
Something Nasty in the Watershed Tom Ryan , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 23 July 2006; (p. 10)

— Review of Jindabyne Beatrix Christian , 2006 single work film/TV
Hooked on Jindabyne Jane Freebury , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 22 July 2006; (p. 24)

— Review of Jindabyne Beatrix Christian , 2006 single work film/TV
Catch of the Day Craig Mathieson , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 25 July vol. 124 no. 6530 2006; (p. 70-71)

— Review of Jindabyne Beatrix Christian , 2006 single work film/TV
Fishy Business Sandy George , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 1-2 July 2006; (p. 4-5)
The World Takes a Shine to a Town Like Jindabyne Andree Stephens , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 1 July 2006; (p. 1)
Back Story Tom Ryan , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 23 July 2006; (p. 10)
Traces the influence of American writer, Raymond Carver's short story 'So Much Water So Close to Home' on the Ausralian film Jindabye and other works.
Hook, Line and a Floater Stephanie Bunbury , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 21 July 2006; (p. 7)
Starry Night Shines Over Jindabyne Sandy George , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 17 July 2006; (p. 3)
Last amended 11 Mar 2015 14:30:39
Settings:
  • Jindabyne, Jindabyne - Eucumbene area, Cooma - Snowy - Bombala area, Southeastern NSW, New South Wales,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X