NITRAM TBC
A history of violence…
★★★★★ OUT 1 JULY CINEMAS
Australian director Justin Kurzel’s tough, tenacious fifth feature starts as it means to continue: with questions. A reporter asks a boy how he burnt himself. The answer is easy – fireworks – but the reasons why prove more complex.
Focused on the perpetrator of the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, 1996, Nitram treads turf well-visited by other films about mass shootings – Elephant, Polytechnique. Yet Kurzel’s interrogative, immersive approach offers a probing portrait of a splintered mindset, taking a scrupulously serious approach to its core query – why? – and presenting its protagonist as a lit firework waiting to explode.
His name reversed from the real criminal’s name in order to avoid boosting his notoriety, Nitram (Caleb Landry Jones) is a difficult young man. Prone to combustible behaviour, he lives with his careworn mum (Judy Davis) and loving yet lax dad (Anthony LaPaglia), who struggle to handle him.
As home conflicts lead Nitram to a bizarre bond with heiress Helen (Essie Davis), a cocktail of mental illness, neglect, money, tragedy and – crucially – access to weapons leads to awful ends.
While screenwriter Shaun Grant doesn’t lay blame, his script meticulously dissects the disparate contributing factors to Nitram’s actions. Discussions about medication and identity pick over his uncertain place in the world. Elsewhere, a grim scene where Nitram beats his ill dad shows violence becoming his default outlet: “That’s what you do,” he says.
His way with actors ever-sure, Kurzel draws committed work from Jones as this heartbreakingly troubled yet increasingly troubling outsider. And while the mean settings echo Kurzel’s 2011 debut, Snowtown, Nitram is the more developed work. Alongside Jed Kurzel’s brooding score, an abrasive sound mix suggests mounting pressure in Nitram’s head to sickening effect; meanwhile, DP Germain McMicking’s intimate images pull us close enough to Nitram to leave scald marks.
As the conclusion looms, the sense of close-up, tight-wound inevitability is made doubly gut-churning by a piercingly observed scene in a firearms shop, whose owner pitches his weapons to Nitram while welcoming the sale. If Kurzel is too sharp to pin Nitram’s actions down to one root cause, he also knows damn well how disaster could have been averted: don’t let people play with guns.
THE VERDICT With taut style and a stinging moral focus, Kurzel mounts a psychologically searching study in escalating dread. Jones nails the lead.
DIRECTOR Justin Kurzel STARRING Caleb Landry Jones, Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia, Essie Davis SCREENPLAY Shaun Grant DISTRIBUTOR Picturehouse Entertainment RUNNING TIME 112 mins