AUSTRALIAN & NEW ZEALAND FILM Locations Relocationsand ‘Jindabyne’ and ‘Macbeth’ ON THE FACE OF IT, THE TWO NEW FILMS JINDABYNE (RAY LAWRENCE, 2006) AND MACBETH (GEOFFREY WrIGHT, 2006) MAY NOT SEEM TO HAVE MUCH IN CommoN. BUT WHEN ONE THINKS AboUT IT, AND WITHOUT WANTING TO LASH THEM TogETHER AS A PIGEON PAIR, IT IS CLEAR THAT IN A COUPLE OF IMPorTANT WAYS THEY ARE WorTH CONSIDERING IN TANDEM. BY BRIAN McFARLANE IRST, and most obvious, they are speare’s title, has set his version of Macbeth in Mel- based on works by famous and non- bourne’s ganglands, which have been the milieu for Australian authors. Second, they are some sensational (or at least sensationally reported) the work of directors whose name killings in the last few years. A film adaptation is – of carries a certain resonance in recent itself – neither more nor less praiseworthy than a film Australian cinema. And, third, they are original: all that matters is the skill with which the ad- Fmore than usually ambitious films in what is already aptation has been effected; whether the filmmakers a good year for locally made films. have comprehensively re-imagined the work as op- posed, say, to aiming at that dogged fidelity which In a recent issue of this journal, I wrote about the per- seems such a doomed enterprise. sistence of the literary adaptation in new Australian cinema.1 While acknowledging a shift in the kinds of These two new films,I shall argue, are the work of works adapted, from the ‘classics’ of our literature filmmakers who, while no doubt respecting their which were so significant an element in the revival of source material (why otherwise would they want to the 1970s to the more abrasive, usually urban fictions film it?), have not hesitated to take a strongly indi- of recent times (cf. this year’s Candy [Neil Armfield]), vidual line with regard to the anterior text. They are I realized that all the novels referred to, and all the directors of whom audiences have expectations, plays but one, were either by Australian authors or stylistic and thematic, and where Wright has omit- set in Australia. D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo (filmed by ted some characters and events, in the interests of Tim Burstall in 1987) is the product of a few months’ a coherent relocation, Lawrence has had to be in- sojourn here by a British writer, and Michael Blake- ventive in providing, as cinema must, the actuali- more’s undervalued Country Life (1984) is derived ty of place and person that a terse short story may from Chekhov’s imperishable study of Russian pro- do without. Neither director has been exactly prolif- vincial life, Uncle Vanya. But these are exceptions. ic and the new films of each are awaited with more than usual – and justified – interest. Now, released within the space of two months, are two major new Australian films whose roots are to Jindabyne: ‘Nothing to Hide’2 be found in other places and other cultures. In Jind- abyne, director Ray Lawrence has taken Raymond EVen FOR CARVER, whO habITUallY DISPenS- Carver’s minimalist short story ‘So Much Water So ES words with an austerity that a Trappist monk Close to Home’ and relocated it to the Snowy Moun- might admire, ‘So Much Water So Close to Home’ tains, while retaining the moral dilemma at the sto- is extraordinarily close-lipped about who the peo- ry’s core. Geoffrey Wright, boldly retaining Shake- ple are and where they live. Not that this matters • Metro Magazine 150 RIGHT: MACBETH Metro Magazine 150 • AUSTRALIAN & NEW ZEALAND FILM for so masterly a writer: in ten pages, ut- wanted to do a film outside.S o when Be- ognize these, or, if they do, to put them to terly free from the sort of authorial com- atrix [Christian, screenwriter] and I decid- one side. The youngest guy, Billy (Simon ment that would guide our judgments, the ed we were going ahead I said, ‘Let’s do Stone), is ‘not getting any reception’ on his lives of Claire and Stuart are laid bare be- what Raymond Carver did. Let’s go where mobile, and this seems enough reason to fore us. Stuart can insist that he has noth- we want to set it and see what happens.’4 go ahead and enjoy the weekend and re- ing to hide; Claire will have her own views Film’s necessarily higher level of mimesis port the body in the water (we’ve seen the on this and make her own reparations; and enjoins on the filmmaker the need for spe- truck-driver dump it there) when they get at the end they will have sex quickly before cificity about details of place. Lawrence back. The primeval forest, with its poten- their small son comes home. Their ways of contrasts the dry expanses in which the tial for engendering conflict, recalls not being with each other emerge with aston- unsettling opening sequence takes place only Deliverance but also the recent Mean ishing clarity from the sparest of exchang- with the serene lake near the town and the Creek (2005) where a bunch of kids do es and, as if heeding Henry James’s dic- house where Claire and Stuart and their very bad things in a setting of majestical- tum that novels should ‘dramatise, drama- son live, and with the lushly forested and ly tranquil beauty. We register the shock of tise’, they seem to reveal themselves with- secluded river (the Snowy, at Island Bend) the dying fishS tuart catches, poignant in out overt intervention. Certainly, it is told in where the men set up their camp – and its beauty, realizing that he who has been Claire’s first-person narrative, but Carver where they find the body.T hough the film semi-deranged by the horror of discover- ensures we know not just hers but Stuart’s makes valuable use of its diversity of nat- ing the body has still been able to get on attitude to the moral point at issue. He is a ural setting, Lawrence and Christian have with the business of the weekend. man who knows he has something to hide. focused very firmly on the strands of the community, the affiliations and undercur- By this point, Jindabyne has become a The story has been filmed before.I t was rents, and, very importantly, the Indigenous film about responsibilities and priorities. I‘ one of the several Carver stories Robert community just outside Jindabyne. don’t know what the fuss is about,’ says Altman adapted for Short Cuts (1993), his Stuart, just before a newspaper runs the epic study of suburban dysfunction and The film opens with a youngI ndigenous headline: MEN FISH OVER DEAD BODY, other maladies. His film was set in Los An- woman driving through a deserted brown and the SBS news reports the body of Su- geles but Stuart and his friends go fish- landscape, singing as she goes a song san O’Connor found in Kosciusko Nation- ing at a remote stretch of water and con- about being ‘off to the races at Jindabyne al Park, while the girl’s family berate the ceal the fact that they have found the dead Fair’. Unknown to her, she is being pur- men on TV. The men have not been pre- body of a naked woman floating where sued by an enigmatic and oddly alarming pared for the rage that makes itself felt in they’ve set up camp. They persuade them- man (Chris Haywood) in a truck, creating the town. ‘It’s about all of us,’ Claire tells selves that it won’t matter to get on with the sort of danger one recalls from Steven Carmel (Leah Purcell), girlfriend of Roc- their weekend trip and that it will be enough Spielberg’s debut feature, Duel (1971). This co (Stelios Yiakmus), the fourth on the fish- to report the body when they get home. cryptic encounter – who is the girl? Why is ing trip. The murderer appears in town This is the story Carver tells, that Altman in- this grizzled truck-driver pursuing her? – and talks about the need for ‘rewiring’ the corporates in his portmanteau masterpiece, gives way to an early morning sequence in church, but the film isn’t about him: it’s es- and which Ray Lawrence now makes the Claire (Laura Linney) and Stuart’s (Gabri- sentially about how the town, especially subject of his full-length film,Jindabyne . el Byrne) house, which appears to estab- the four women partners of the fishing-trip Though place and some names have been lish a close loving family, with hugs for blokes, come to terms with their self-justi- changed and though there’s a wealth of so- young son Tom, and talk of the upcoming fying expedience and how at least one of cial and personal detail that is not to be fishermen’s weekend away.T hen the film the women, Claire, needs to come to a kind found in Carver and is spread over a wider moves to another household in which an of reconciliation with the Indigenous com- range of characters in Short Cuts, what still older couple, Jude and Carl (Deborra-lee munity, even at the risk to her own mar- matters is the story’s moral core. Furness and John Howard) are concerned riage. Not that she is presented as a sim- that their granddaughter is not in her bed- ple-minded figure of restorative justice. Her Whereas Altman chose ‘Los Angeles sub- room. Quite quickly it is clear that neither ‘back-story’, to use that cultish term it’s urbs that are going to seed …rather than of these households is quite what it seems, usually better to avoid, includes a strange Carver’s grey anonymous Midwest as his that there is lurking unhappiness and less- and unexplained dereliction of maternal location’,3 Lawrence has elected the mag- than-perfect trust at work among the oc- duty when she walked away from her mar- nificentS nowy Mountains and Jindabyne cupants.