Heartland: Jasper Jones

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There seem to be two things that I’m a sucker for: coming-of-age stories and murder mysteries. Whether they’re combined or separated, I’m usually open to diving into a book / movie when either is involved in some way. So when I found out that this year’s Heartland Film Festival was bringing one to the festival, I knew I was going to end up watching it one way or the other. After seeing it, I knew that I didn’t make a mistake. However, I also knew that what I just saw was far from perfect.

Rachel Perkins' "Jasper Jones" is an Australian film starring Levi Miller as Charlie Bucktin, a kid who gets pulled into a serious situation when local outcast Jasper Jones decides to show him the body of Laura Wishart. Jones swears he had nothing to do with Laura’s death but knows that the police will think he did it because he’s mixed-race, it’s 1969 and he’s an easy person to blame due to his outcast reputation.

Hearing Jasper’s plea for help, Charlie decides to help Jasper hide the body until they can find concrete evidence that Jasper is not the killer. Add that to being awkward, liking the dead girl’s younger sister and having difficulties at home, and you have a teenage boy that has more to worry about than puberty.

To start with the positives, the story is definitely interesting. The film doesn’t waste time revealing the mystery, giving us enough time to see how Charlie is before and after discovering the body. The story does a great job developing Charlie’s family life, his friends, the community he lives in, and how the community reacts to Laura's “disappearance." The mystery even goes down a path I never expected, which feels nice and different. The cast as an ensemble is great, the cinematography makes 1960s Australia look gorgeous, and the direction by Perkins is very good. Seeing Hugo Weaving, Toni Collette, and Angourie Rice (of "The Nice Guys") portray their characters without being distracting showed a nice touch in their characterizations. It also doesn’t hurt to hear them use their natural Australian accents.

However, this film definitely needed to rework the story a bit because it has a hard time balancing between the mystery and the coming-of-age elements. They barely feel intertwined with each other, almost as if the film flips a switch to one when it gets bored of the other. It also doesn’t help that the film only follows Charlie’s perspective, leading for most of the film to show the teenage boy problems (which are interesting but definitely not as interesting as the mystery) until Jasper decides to pop back into the story again. This leads to the story feeling unnecessarily slow throughout until the third act. Once the mystery is finally solved, the film wraps up quickly in an unsatisfying but passable way. Figuring out afterward that the film was based off a book, it definitely felt like a film that was a slave to the source material.

In the end, "Jasper Jones" is a good coming-of-age murder mystery that had the possibility to be great. A great ensemble cast, gorgeous cinematography and interesting story makes it worth a watch. If you’re planning on going to Heartland this year, I would recommend giving it a watch. It shouldn’t be your first pick, but if you have the time during the festival, I’d recommend letting this tale of teenage boys solving a mystery in '60s Australia take you away.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti0XVYcRR4s]