A national trauma in 1996, the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania left 35 dead and 23 injured in 1996. Twelve days later, the Canberra government restricted access to arms in Australia. A law whose constraints have not ceased to regress since. Nitram, by Australian director Justin Kurzel, returns to the facts and is released in theaters on Wednesday May 11. It analyzes one of the worst mass killings that the country has known, through the portrait of its author, Martin Bryant, nicknamed Nitram, whose interpreter, Caleb Landry Jones, won the Best Actor Award at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
In the mid-1990s, Nitram lived with his parents between loneliness, odd jobs and frustration. He meets Helen, a wealthy elderly heiress, who hires him as a gardener. Marginal, surrounded by animals, exuberant, she lives an intimate relationship with her employee. When she disappears in a tragic accident, Nitram, made to feel guilty, rediscovers her loneliness and mockery, then obtains weapons to commit the irreparable.
When Justin Kurzel’s project was known in Australia, an outcry arose to denounce a film which endeavors to give the point of view of the assassin and not that of the victims. It is however this angle of attack which makes it possible to decipher the motive for the crime and its process. The director’s desire to denounce the ease of access to weapons in Australia passes through the portrait of a young adult who should never have been able to obtain them. Psychologically unstable, without a gun license, this did not prevent a gunsmith from selling him an entire arsenal.
We think of Elephant (2003) by Gus Van Sant on the mass crime of Columbine (1999) which gave the point of view of the victims, but also denounced the access to weapons in the United States, in particular on the Internet. Justin Kurzel follows the author of the crime, Nitram (Martin, in verlan). For young people of his age, Martin does not turn round, he is upside down, hence his nickname. Until his parents who named him that. And if he is close to his mother, the father is almost absent, the two trying to control their free electron at home. Frowning, angry, idle, Nitram changes in contact with Helen, his employer, also marginal. When she dies, he freaks out. The filmmaker speaks of this bottom of the story, the motive of his acts, them, never shown.
A hyperactive child, fascinated by fire, nervous and a liar, Nitram’s androgynous physique places him in a gray area from which his dark side will emerge. Justin Kurzel focuses on the characters and their psychology in tight frames. Caleb Landry Jones, of all shots, performs a Nitram that goes from gentle madness to tension. Slow, progressive, Nitram dismantles a process anchored since childhood. The short documentary prologue about two children questioned about their future sheds light on what is to follow: one is confident, the other hesitant, guess who Nitram is?
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Gender : Drama
Director: Justin Kurzel
Actors: Caleb Landry Jones, Essie Davis, Anthony LaPaglia
Country : Australia
Duration : 1h50
Exit : May 11
Distributer : Ad Vitam
Summary: In Australia in the mid-1990s, Nitram lives with her parents, where time passes between loneliness and frustration. While offering his services as a gardener, he meets Helen, a marginal heiress who lives alone with her animals. Together, they build a life apart. When Helen tragically dies, Nitram’s anger and loneliness resurface. Then begins a long descent that will lead him to the worst.