in “Nitram”, Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel traces the origins of a massacre

OFFICIAL SELECTION – IN COMPETITION

On page 5 of World dated April 30, 1996, the news was contained in less than a hundred lines, under two large articles devoted, one to the succession of Indonesian President Suharto, the other to relations between the two Koreas. This footer was titled “Young Man Kills 34 People in Australian State of Tasmania”, the name of the “Young blond man with the appearance of a surfer” who carried out this massacre with a semi-automatic weapon was not mentioned. His name was Martin Bryant.

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Nitram is of course Martin, spelled backwards. Before even setting foot in the hall, an Australian spectator knows what Justin Kurzel’s film wants to talk about: this configuration in which a mentally unstable man is able to obtain weapons of war. If nothing is known about the Port Arthur massacre before sitting down in front of the screen, Nitram is a strange, scary film, which begins with the portrayal of a family ravaged by mental illness, continues with the tale of an unforeseen yet toxic friendship before, finally, the uninitiated understand the path they have taken. roam Kurzel and his bloody destination. And if we retrace his steps, we understand that the filmmaker has returned to his first obsession, that of Snowtown Crimes (2011), another detailed account of an atrocious news item, which he said was linked – like all Australian cinema – to the ” relationship [de l’Australie] with the first occupants and what was done to them ”.

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From the original country, Nitram can not show anything, in Tasmania, the aboriginal population has been exterminated. What grew instead looks like a hybrid from Western Europe and North America. In one of the pavilions in the suburbs of Hobart, the state capital, Martin and his parents are suffering, each in their own way. The screenplay by Shaun Grant (who had previously written The Snowtown Crimes) takes up and compacts the events that followed one another in the years preceding the massacre, while taking care to respect their internal logic.

Dumpers of dollars

Martin (Caleb Landry Jones) lifts his loneliness around deserted streets. In fact, he looks like a surfer (but when he does, he won’t be able to stand on the board), until he speaks. We guess then that something is missing, and it is this emptiness, much more than the Australian accent which he has mastered, which makes all the strength of the performance of Caleb Landry Jones, noted American actor, among others in Three Billboards and in the third season of Twin Peaks. This void, which school services measure in IQ points and social services in disability rates, keeps him apart from others. Of those who could have been his comrades, who nicknamed him Nitram. From his mother (Judy Davis), never named, who can not get out of the depression in which the condition of her son has plunged her. Even his father (Anthony LaPaglia), who is the only one to express a little compassion towards Martin, without being able to oppose him with anything other than his own weakness. The two Australian veterans are overwhelming.

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