No studio wanted to touch Justin Kurzel’s “Nitram,” for fear of controversy, since it is a drama based on a very touchy subject in Australian history.
Set in suburban Australia in the Mid 1990s, the film revolves around the Australian mass killer of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, which led to scathing changes of gun control law in that country.
We all know how it’s going to end, but it doesn’t even matter. In “Nitram,” we’re witnessing 21st century isolation, a millennial whose distant and troubled relationship with his parents, not to mention his inability to fit into society, will ultimately lead him down a very dark and heinous path of destruction.
I wasn’t a fan of Kurzel’s previous films, although they were very well-directed, but this film really blew me away when I saw it at Cannes. There’s a meticulousness to it all, Kurzel tightens the screws of tension as we follow Caleb Landry Jones’ Nitram, living his mundane upper-class life. That is until he unexpectedly finds a close friend in a reclusive heiress, Helen.
“Nitram” depicts immense loneliness and anger, a slow descent that leads to a horrifying climax, and Landry Jones absolutely frightens in the ticking-time-bomb approach he lends to his character.
Kurzel’s film premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it deservedly won a best actor prize for Landry Jones. A hybrid release is planned both in theaters on March 30, 2022, and on AMC Plus, AMC Networks’ streaming service. [B+]
Exarchopoulos will of course forever be known for her lead turn opposite Léa Seydoux in Abdellatif Kechiche’s Palme d’Or winner “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” released in 2013.