jasper jones 16pt large print edition craig silvey

Dan Wyllie plays Charlie’s mild-mannered father and Toni Collette – terrific as always, with broad range of emotions to play with – his hard-nosed mother, for whom small-town life is constraining and dull.Īnother titanic Australian actor emerges quite a ways into the running time: a grubby, singlet-clad, bushy-bearded Hugo Weaving. The film has a twang of old-school, would-have-gotten-away-with-it-if-it-wasn’t-for-you-meddling-kids sleuthing about it, like a plot out of The Hardy Boys.Ĭharlie also navigates the challenges of pubescent life, including managing interactions with a girl he fancies (Angourie Rice) and dealing with his parents. This kickstarts a detective story component à la bicycle rides, trips to the library and jumps over neighbours’ fences I kept waiting for Charlie to pick up a magnifying glass.

Toni Collette and Dan Wyllie as Charlie’s hard-nosed mother and mild-mannered father. They hide the body and resolve to find the culprit. Jasper is convinced he’s been framed for murder and Charlie believes him. Jasper escorts Charlie to a secluded part of the woods he calls his own, where the corpse of a teenage girl is dangling from a tree.

The change is small but telling: an early sign that this adaptation (penned by Silvey and Shaun Grant, who also wrote Snowtown) has been handled with great care and diligence. That moment, or that kind of behaviour, works fine on the page, but adding dialogue translates a lot better for the screen. “I decide to press my palms to my stomach and puff my cheeks when I wag my head at his offer,” the author wrote, “as if to suggest that I’ve smoked so many this evening that I’m simply too full to take another.” Silvey described that moment differently in the book, which is written from Charlie’s first-person perspective. In the film, Charlie (who’s never smoked in his life) knocks him back: “It’s not my brand,” he says, maintaining faux coolness. On the way to the woods Jasper offers him a cigarette. The titular character is a little older and a lot tougher the kind of guy Charlie wants to impress. Jasper, distressed, convinces Charlie to sneak out so he can show him something. He is Jasper Jones (Aaron McGrath), a teenage outcast of mixed white-Aboriginal heritage. Late at night, Charlie is roused by a boy tapping at his window. Soon after, Perkins abruptly changes tone. As Jasper Jones opens, 13-year-old Charlie (Levi Miller) and best buddy Jeffrey (Kevin Long) debate whether Batman is technically a superhero given that he has no actual superpower – and whether Spider-Man would be of any use in their (fictional) home town of Corrigan, given that there is so little to swing from. During one scene in Stand By Me, two boys discuss whether Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman.

Jasper jones 16pt large print edition craig silvey