Mark Reviews Movies: NITRAM

Nitram, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 29, 2022

The question of necessity is, perhaps, first and foremost on one's mind when it comes to Nitram. This film follows a man who ultimately will commit the deadliest mass shooting in the modern times of Australia. Do we really need to see this particular story dramatized from that specific perspective?

That, unfortunately, is a question without a satisfactory answer, but regardless, the film, written by Shaun Grant and directed by Justin Kurzel, exists. In what the film presents, it does not exploit the tragedy or even depict the violence that happened at Port Arthur in Tasmania on a day in April in 1996.

For the latter, we can be grateful, because to read at the end of this film that the attacker killed 35 people, including children, and wounded an additional 23 is one thing. To look into the details of those murders is another, unspeakably horrifying matter altogether.

As for the former assertion of what the film doesn't do, that is a matter of personal perspective. Kurzel's film has garnered some controversy from various parties, including survivors and the families of those killed. They are right to criticize or outright condemn this film's existence. They already know everything that Grant and Kurzel want and have to say with their film, and because they know so much more than this film attempts to examine, no one should question their judgment on this matter.

For the rest of us, who may know little to nothing about this or other mass shootings except for what the news and history tell us, there is a purpose to this story. The filmmakers have, in portraying the psychological background of this killer and the steps he took toward the mass shooting, provided a comprehensible map of why he did what he did and how he went about organizing his mass murder.

The point isn't simply to show us, though, and if there is a fault with the filmmakers' distanced and objective view of this man and these events, it's that the bigger goal of telling this story might be lost amidst the practical, logical movement from one step to the next. This is a case of needing to read between those steps. For every movement forward here, well before the killings occurred, there are multiple things that could have stopped him and several people who might have said or done something.

We meet the soon-to-be murderer first as a child, lying in a hospital bed on a television news report. He was injured playing with fireworks, and when the reporter asks if the kid plans to stop doing so, the boy says he won't. He likes playing with them too much.

That's our first warning sign, and it's one that the boy's parents clearly come to ignore. He's a young man in the next scene, still playing with fireworks in the backyard. The man is only referred to as Nitram (Caleb Landry Jones), pronounced "nit ram," in this story, and just as not showing the killings is the correct choice, not giving the real murderer his name here is also right (This review will follow that example).

He lives with his mother (played by an imposing Judy Davis)—who's tough but permissive, giving us and likely Nitram the impression that she stopped wanting anything to do with her son a long time ago—and father (played by an emotionally wounded Anthony LaPaglia)—who's kind and even more permissive, on account of depression that becomes worse as his family and dreams start to fall apart in front of him. They could have—and probably should have—gotten more help for or stopped their son, but beyond their own shortcomings, it's not entirely that easy. Nitram receives a disability pension, after being diagnosed with an intellectual disability, and while he's on anti-depressants, his psychiatrist is already hoping to wean him off his medication.

Trying to earn money to buy a surfboard (His mother won't pay for it, after having years of unused stuff, purchased on Nitram's demanding whims, piled up in the shed), he decides to mow lawns in town. At one house, a dilapidated thing in the middle of nowhere, Nirtam meets Helen (Essie Davis), the heiress of a fortune who quickly takes a liking to the young man. She buys him whatever he wants, and eventually, Nitram ends up moving in with her. As for the nature of their relationship, they simply both seem to be lonely, although Nitram definitely appreciates the ability to get anything and, in the process, irritate his mother.

Assorted setbacks, such as the failures of Nitram's father to start a bed-and-breakfast, and tragedies, such as what happens to Helen (although what part Nitram plays in that and, almost as important in a different way, how his parents protect their son after feel like a particularly significant step in his outlook), unfold. Kurzel veers incredibly close toward finding some sympathy for Nitram, as a product of his limitations and his family and what does go wrong for all of them. Grant's screenplay and Jones' precisely calibrated performance, though, pull back on that thought as soon it creeps into existence (There's a tender moment between the son and the father that suddenly erupts into violence, for example).

All of these personal events, combined with the way a different mass shooting is covered on television and the ease with which anyone at the time in Australia could purchase an arsenal (The filmmakers acknowledge legislative changes after this crime, but they know, worry, and make clear that enforcement isn't the same thing), lead to the final moment in which we see this character. For the murders, Nitram squarely condemns one person, but as for how and why he arrived at that particular place, there's plenty of blame to be spread.

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