The gun horror Down Under – and its chilling link to Britain
Nitram Cert: 15, 1hr 52mins
Minions: The Rise Of Gru Cert: U, 1hr 27mins
Eric Ravilious: Drawn To War Cert: PG, 1hr 27mins
The Princess Cert: 12, 1hr 49mins
With the appalling events of Uvalde, Texas still so recent – where 21 people, 19 of them children, were killed at school by a single gunman – it’s clear that the horror of mass shootings remains very much with us. But they are certainly not confined to the United States, as a powerful new film from director Justin Kurzel, who brought us Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth and True History Of The Kelly Gang, reminds us.
Nitram describes the run-up to the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia, in 1996, where 35 people were killed by a single gunman and which itself – at least according to Kurzel’s film – was inspired by the much closer-tohome tragedy at Dunblane, where 16 children and one teacher had been killed just a month earlier. It’s important to know this sort of heartbreaking background before you go in, because the film is a slow, naturalistic build – closer in style to Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant, which described the run-up to a Columbinestyle school massacre, than Lynne Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin from 2011.
So as we watch the petulant over-grown child that is Nitram (the film never quite explains that his nickname is Martin backwards) abusing his long-suffering parents, letting off fireworks and befriending a lonely, reclusive heiress (Essie Davis) who can’t see what a damaged individual he is, the tension slowly, inexorably mounts.
Caleb Landry Jones won Best Actor at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for his characteristically intense performance in the title role, but do look out for the reliably superb Judy Davis, who is quietly brilliant as his despairing mother.
It’s getting increasingly hard to keep count but Minions: The Rise Of Gru is the fifth film, I think, to feature the supposedly adorable little yellow creatures with the blue overalls – three from the original Despicable Me franchise and now a second from the semidetached Minions series, although this one does confusingly feature Gru, the super-villain at the heart of the Despicable Me films. Confused? Not really. It’s a children’s film, we can cope.
As we learned in the first Minions film, Kevin, Stuart and Bob and the rest of the little yellow gang (all still superbly voiced by Pierre Coffin) have been aiding and abetting villains since the dawn of time and now, finally, they’ve met Gru. The only problem is, while Gru is obsessed with super-villainy, he is still only 12.
By and large, it’s good summer holiday fun for the family with
some amusing lines and a very funny plane sequence. At the same time, however, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.
The instantly recognisable and unmistakeably English watercolours produced by the late Eric Ravilious are often described as too accessible – in other words, nice – for him to be considered great.
So full marks to film-maker Margy Kinmonth for assembling a cast of distinguished contributors, including Alan Bennett, Grayson Perry, Robert Macfarlane and Ai Weiwei, who politely disagree. What ensues is both poignant (Ravilious was killed in action in 1942) and delightful.
What unfolds in The Princess is the by now surely over-familiar story of the short life of Diana, Princess of Wales. The use of music and lack of narration in the film certainly adds atmosphere but unfortunately also robs the undeniably well-assembled and skilfullyedited documentary footage of some of its potential power.