And, to top it all off, there’s a violent murderer walking free on the streets of Corrigan. Charlie, though, has adolescent growing pains of his own, Eliza - the girl he has confused romantic feelings towards - being angry with him, too. All the while, Charlie’s mother, Ruth (portrayed by the enormously talented Toni Collette), worries about her son growing up too quickly and makes numerous attempts to connect with him. He’s also concerned about Jasper, who has become a fugitive from the law. For one, he is baffled about the prejudice surrounding his best friend’s family. Perhaps this is because Charlie has a lot on his plate. Okay … wait … let me put my ‘Shocked Face’ on. And when we are finally introduced to the Wishart family, through Charlie’s schoolmate Eliza (Angourie Rice), it feels a little too late there doesn’t seem to be any real sense of urgency in cracking the case or discovering the reasons behind Laura’s (Eliza’s older sister) untimely passing. While this shift certainly reinforces the idea that Charlie is still only a kid, the tone and overall mood becomes muddled, Charlie content to just drift along, tailing secondary characters until the mystery is almost solved on its own. However, the very next morning, when Charlie wakes, Laura’s death still fresh in his mind, he’s happy to go along to cricket practice with his best friend Jeffrey Lu (Kevin Long), son of the only Vietnamese family living in the remote countryside town, the Lu’s burdened with constant race-hate due to the ongoing Vietnam War. We are given a suspect, the reclusive Mad Jack Lionel, and set on a path. This is somewhat disappointing if you ask me, considering that the atmosphere is so well set within the first few frames, Perkins drawing viewers into the mystery of what appears to be a murder - a young girl found hanging from a tree, bruised and beaten, while a heartbroken, angry delinquent (catalyst Jasper Jones) pleads for Charlie’s help in finding out who killed her. While this is certainly a lot for a teenage boy to handle, the flood of material can also be a too much for the audience to digest, too. See, this 14-year-old boy is suddenly confronted with death, suicide, racism, wartime conflict, police brutality, domestic violence and the threat of his own family’s collapse (this in the form of his parents’ divorce). When breaking it down, Jasper Jones - the story’s source material often described as being Australia’s very own To Kill a Mockingbird - can be summed up as a coming-of-age story, moviegoers following Charlie on his quest to discover the truth, our hero forced to find himself and grow up rather quickly. Written by Shaun Grant, The Snowtown Murders (2011), and author Craig Silvey (who also penned the novel), the screenplay features so many twists and turns that it becomes a little difficult to pinpoint the actual plot. Believing that Jones is not the culprit, Charlie agrees to aid Jasper in finding the perpetrator and prove Jones’ innocence Jasper convinced that the man responsible was the infamous Mad Jack Lionel (an almost unrecognizable Hugo Weaving), the pair setting off to validate their somewhat ‘flimsy’ theory. After a brief discussion, Charlie is coerced into following the anxious Jasper into the dense thicket, where he is shown something truly disturbing: the dead body of Laura Wishart. McGrath), a mixed-race (White-Aboriginal) adolescent with a sketchy past and a horrifying secret. Set during the scorching summer of ’69 - post-Christmas December to be precise - our shy, bookish protagonist, Charlie, is, late one night, visited by social outcast Jasper Jones (Aaron L. The story is that of Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller), a lanky 14-year-old boy living in the 1960s, who resides in the fictitious rural town of Corrigan, Western Australia. Directed by Rachel Perkins, Bran Nue Dae (2009), the film - based on Craig Silvey’s much-loved 2009 paperback - is a cornucopia of superbly acted, beautifully shot, yet tonally jumbled scenes, the narrative, more often than not, straying too far from its chief premise. Jasper Jones, the latest to make the book-to-movie jump, is no exception. We take a much-loved, world-renowned novella and cram it into a 90-plus minute fiesta of themes and visuals. In recent years Australian cinema has become a hot bed for book-to-film adaptations.
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