Nitram is intellectually disabled, wandering his home and neighborhood in a sort of daze. He struggles to talk to girls, lights fireworks in the middle of the day, and sometimes even gives them to local schoolchildren. He lives with his parents, played perfectly by the great Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia.
Dad has a Willy Loman desperation to buy a bed and breakfast, and was recently approved to do so with a bank loan. Mom has the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that sometimes comes with a life spent uncertain about the danger level of someone living in your own house. At the beginning, “Nitram” feels like another story about the difficulty of parenting someone right on the verge of unstable. Jones and Kurzel don’t lean into the “growing sociopath” aspect of Nitram in obvious ways, more capturing the kind of sadness and apathy that can lead to dangerous thoughts.
Things look up for Nitram when he meets someone who appears to be a similarly lost soul in a wealthy former actress named Helen (Essie Davis), but she too carries a bone-deep melancholy at an unfulfilled life. Still, these two outcasts become an odd couple, buoying each other’s miseries.
Helen buys him a car even though he doesn’t have a license, and Nitram eventually moves in with Helen, much to his parent’s surprise, who are unsure if Helen is looking for a husband or a son. Without spoiling anything, dad’s business plans and Nitram’s new BFF each end in their own individually tragic fashions, pushing Nitram further down the road to the decision he would make in April 1996, when he shot almost three dozen people, leading to historic gun laws in the country.
Nitram is a 2021 Australian biographical psychological drama film directed by Justin Kurzel from a screenplay by Shaun Grant. The film revolves around the life and behaviors of a disturbed young man called “Nitram” (based on Martin Bryant), and the events leading to his involvement in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia. The film stars Caleb Landry Jones, Judy Davis, Essie Davis and Anthony LaPaglia.
Nitram premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival on 16 July 2021, where Jones won the Best Actor award for his performance. The film received a limited theatrical release in Australia on 30 September 2021, before a digital release on the Australian streaming service Stan on 24 November 2021.
It received positive reviews from critics, who praised Kurzel’s direction and the cast’s performances, although the film was still met with controversy in Tasmania. The film later received eight awards at the 2021 AACTA Awards, including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.
Nitram (2022)
Directed by: Justin Kurzel
Starring: Caleb Landry Jones, Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia, Phoebe Taylor, Sean Keenan, Conrad Brandt, Jessie Ward, Zaidee Ward, Ethan Cook, Essie Davis, Charlotte Friels, Lucy-Rose Leonard
Screenplay by: Shaun Grant
Production Design by: Alice Babidge
Cinematography by: Germain McMicking
Film Editing by: Nick Fenton
Costume Design by: Alice Babidge
Set Decoration by: Quinn Delany-Veldhuis
Art Direction by: Marni Kornhauser
Music by: Jed Kurzel
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: IFC Fimkz
Release Date: July 16, 2021 (Cannes), September 30, 2021 (Australia), March 30, 2022 (United States)
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