Jasper Mall

My son and I fell like we were watching a car wreck in slow motion. A group of lovely people caught up in an inevitable economic tragedy that is coming their way. The cinematography and editing is very well done. Admittedly, this is a minor film, but worth every one of the 86 minutes you'll spend watching.

All in all I enjoyed this documentary about a dying mall in Jasper Alabama. The film offers a cross section of people who work there and shop there as well as efforts (generally not successful) to increase foot traffic. I just wished occasionally the film makers had pulled away from the mall setting to give us some context about the larger community where the mall is set. Sure, internet commerce has hurt malls across the country, but are there shopping areas in Jasper that are prospering, such as downtown or the area where the jewelry repair shop moved to? Or is Jasper overall an economically depressed area that has gone severely down hill since the hey day of Jasper Mall in the 80s and 90s? The film would have been a much more rewarding experience for me if such contextual interludes had been provided.

Jasper Mall was an entertaining look into the life of a mall. It's both heartwarming and tragic. As a child of the 80s, I spent much of my adolescence in malls like Jasper Mall making friends, hanging out in the food courts and the arcades, and just spending time there. So when I began watching this documentary, it brought me back to a time and place in my youth who's memory put a big smile on my face. At the same time, I was saddened and heartbroken by the fact that these places are disappearing. They weren't just places for shopping. Malls were where you met your first love, where you went on your first date, where you met your best friends, where you made so many memories, and they're going away because American culture has changed. Jasper Mall is a time capsule for the future, where one day we will look back and say "remember when we used to go to the mall?" It's a both a story of a mall as a physical entity but also as a reference point in the lives of all these invdividuals and their personal stories, from the Zookeeper turnded security and custodian, to Robin the retiring florist, and young starry-eyed interracial couple, the old men playing dominos, the tattooed hair stylist who wants to escape Jasper to do great things in her life. They all have personal stories and they're all part of the life and times of Jasper Mall.

The epitome of a slice-of-life documentary! Jasper Mall offers such straightforward Middle America vibes that anyone who's never left the big city they grew up in might find this pretty alien. It's so low key, so go-with-the-flow, so "real time" feeling that it manages a dreamlike quality. Of course, the dreamlike pace also comes from the disciplined editing, the reflective ambient score, and the beautiful photography. There is an endearing quality to this doc, but also an underlying melancholy all the way through.

I think the average person would think "nothing happens in this movie", but that's beside the point. What it comes down to is: I never thought I would see malls become a thing of the past in my entire lifetime. Now, suddenly, we're here, and slowly, one by one, they're gonna start shutting down. What's the primary reason for this? Amazon, of course. Where did I watch this movie? On Amazon (Prime Video) - how meta is that?

The fact that this was shot in 2019, the year before the pandemic hit, also adds another element of surrealism to the viewing experience. It's almost like a precursor to the vacant vibes we were about to face. It makes you wonder - is the pandemic really expediting the obsoletion of so many things that we've been accustomed to our whole lives, as much as we think it is? Or, would most of this be happening soon any way?

In the end, I don't think you will walk away from Jasper Mall remembering many of the specific scenes for the rest of your life, maybe none of them at all, but it's an equally comforting and eerie thing to watch in our current state (nearly one year into the COVID-19 pandemic). It floats in this strange limbo between nostalgic warmth and dystopian apathy. It's a tasteful doc - subtle but with great purpose.

The documentary provides a good picture of the current state of the American middle class. The various causes of the mall's decline emerge throughout the documentary.