Nitram: Film Review
Caleb Landry Jones won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival last year for his performance in Nitram and rightly so. I wish this film had a big enough budget to campaign for him to get an Oscar nomination!
Justin Kurzel‘s latest film tells the story of Nitram (Jones), or Martin Bryant, who is still in prison for the 1996 Port Arthur mass shooting in Tasmania, Australia.
Unsurprisingly, when this film was announced, there was a lot of controversy and backlash from Australians and specifically relatives of the victims. I completely get it. But it’s worth stating the film is not as bad as it sounds. It does not show the atrocious crimes Bryant committed and is more of a character study of his life leading up to that point. He is not glorified in any way and his name is never said (I googled it after). Plus, the film delivers a shocking and devastating message about modern gun ownership in Australia.
That being said, Nitram is still a hard-hitting, sobering watch. You’re in the company of a disturbed psychopath for 112 minutes. The film is about his mental state, his relationship with his parents (Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia) and the events leading up to the tragedy. You can draw parallels to today’s America when you see how easy it is for a mentally ill person to buy an arsenal of weapons. Even if you don’t know how the story is going to end, you feel in the pit of your stomach that he’s going to do something horrific. The tension builds and builds and you know it in your gut.
Jones has built his career out of playing weird and offbeat characters so he was the perfect choice for Nitram. His eyes are haunting and his mood swings are scary and dangerous. He is terrifying and unhinged and he made me feel on edge. He deserves so much praise for portraying someone that makes you feel so uncomfortable.
The performances are excellent all around. Judy Davis is thoroughly fed up and exhausted having someone as unstable and unpredictable as Nitram as her son. Essie Davis is also excellent as Nitram’s friend Helen, a rich loner with lots of dogs. She is different and an outsider too and they seem to understand each other.
Nitram is a tough, sombre film – as it should be, given the subject matter. It is not a film you put on for light relief or to be entertained but it is an important, eye-opening watch that I’d still recommend.
In cinemas from Friday 1st July