By Bill Blake (12)
Craig Silvey’s much-loved novel Jasper Jones translated brilliantly to the stage in a Kate Mulvany-scripted version for Belvoir. In Rachel Perkins’ screen adaptation it fails to deliver what we love most about the book.
In the opening scene we see Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller, Red Dog: True Blue), a bookish 14-year-old with his friend – cricket loving Vietnamese boy Jeffrey Lu (newcomer Kevin Long) – discussing comic books.
In the book and the stage play, the scene very effectively demonstrates their friendship, their shared interests, and it introduces the underlying message of the story (“Courage is the resistance to fear, the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear”). But in the film it feels stiff and emotionless.
Many elements of the book loved by readers – town bully Warwick, Jeffrey’s brilliant batting in a cricket match – aren’t prominent enough. An extra 10 minutes should have been set aside to cater for them.
The narrative begins when Jasper Jones (Aaron L. McGrath) – the town’s notorious Aboriginal outcast and scapegoat – comes to Charlie’s window late one night, and asks Charlie to follow him.
Charlie is reluctant but follows Jasper to a bushland spot outside of town. There they find a girl hanging. She is town beauty Laura Wishart, Jasper’s girlfriend. The desperate Jasper recruits Charlie to help him find the killer before he gets the blame.
Craig Silvey and Shaun Grant’s screenplay focuses on the whodunit aspects of the story. Charlie’s struggle with the secrets he must carry and his love for Laura’s sister Eliza (Angourie Rice) is downplayed.
The best performances in the film came from Hugo Weaving playing Mad Jack Lionel – a tortured fringe-dwelling man – and Toni Collette as Charlie’s difficult, fun-loving mum who hides her flings with local men as nights playing cards with the girls.
The small town of Pemberton, WA, serves as the set of Jasper Jones and it looks very much like a 1960’s town.
A solid enough adaptation but it just doesn’t do the book justice.
Jasper Jones screens nationally from 2nd March.
