
Jasper Jones is an Australian Stand By Me.
And it’s just as great.
Today at the New Zealand International Film Festival I caught this film from Australia, directed from Rachel Perkins. Only in the credits did I discover that it’s based on a book by the same name, written by an Australian fella called Craig Silvey. That the film is based on a novel is only apparent towards the end of the film, which I’ll get to.
Jasper Jones is about Charlie Bucktin, a young lad who lives in the (fictitious) logging town of Corrigan, in Western Australia, in 1969. We open with Charlie talking to chum Jeffrey Lu about superheroes, while they both spit seeds at washing drying on the line. Standard way for a pair of young Aussie lads to spend an afternoon.
On Christmas evening, just as Charlie is going to sleep, he hears a knock at his window. It’s Jasper Jones, a mixed-Aboriginal teen who is a bit of an outcast in the town. He needs Charlie’s help, and leads him into the bush to a grisly scene — a bloody, bruised dead girl hanging by a rope from a tree. Jasper tells Charlie that he found her hanging like that, and if anyone else finds the body he’ll get the blame. Jasper has been seeing her romantically in secret. He asks Charlie to help throw the body into a nearby lake. Charlie does, and eventually goes back to bed.
Over the next few days a search goes on for the missing girl, and Charlie starts looking into the murder in secret. He also has to deal with the everyday goings-on of a young boy. Laura’s sister, Eliza, is sweet on him. His mum doesn’t want him wandering the streets. His dad locks himself away in his home office at night. Jeffery wants to join the cricket team. Will Charlie be able to figure out who really killed Laura, and will Jasper bear the brunt of the blame regardless?

There are a lot of parallels between Jasper Jones and Stand By Me. Both are coming-of-age dramas. Both are based on written stories. Both have kids dealing with everyday young person drama, as well as something much more serious.
That’s the part I loved about Jasper Jones. Poor Charlie gets wrapped up in this horrible murder mystery, with real dead kids and a dark streak running through the town. But at the same time, he has to deal with girls and curfews and parents with a shaky marriage. It’s like a Marvel Comics character in a way. Balancing the personal issues of Peter Parker with the responsibilities of Spider-Man. Remember that the movie begins with Charlie and friend Jeffery talking about superheroes, and I don’t think it’s an accident that “Jasper Jones” is a very Marvel “secret identity” name.
The town of Corrigan has a deeper dark side than just one missing girl. Jasper is an outcast apparently for no other reason than that he’s half Aboriginal. Young Jeffery is Vietnamese, and he and his family experience racism from the rest of the townspeople. First it’s verbal, then it’s physical. It builds for us as an audience at the same time as Charlie realises that not everything is perfect. He’s growing up and learning about the bad stuff in the world, and so are we.
So if Jasper Jones is an Australian drama film, does that mean Toni Colette and Hugo Weaving are in it? Yes, yes they are. They’re both excellent, though Toni gets more screen time and makes the most of it. But the kids are the real stars, and they’re great. Levi Miller as Charlie is just about perfect, and Aaron L. McGrath as Jasper does a fantastic job in near-darkness throughout the film. I actually reckon that Angourie Rice is the real breakout star as Eliza.
The only part that drags a little is towards the end, when the mysteries are being unravelled for the audience. There are looooong stretches of monologue and dialogue where characters are explaining things that happened in the past. It’s almost like Sherlock Holmes explaining the mystery at the end of the mystery. Which works great on a page, and here’s where the film’s literary roots are betrayed. Film is a visual medium, and those scenes might have benefited from flashbacks or some other technique (there are light flashbacks but not quite enough).
But it certainly isn’t a bad ending by any means. And with everything else leading up to it, Jasper Jones is wonderful. The movie blends light and dark in a way that only the best coming-of-age stories do. Jasper Jones is funny yet tragic, uplifting yet cynical, and fantastic yet realistic.

