Nitram (2021)
Director: Justin Kurzel
Screenwriter: Shaun Grant
Starring: Caleb Landry Jones, Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia, Essie Davis
James Baldwin famously wrote that “artists are here to disturb the peace.” Few contemporary directors embrace that challenge as directly as Justin Kurzel. Known for confronting transgressive Australian figures in films such as Snowtown Murders and True History of the Kelly Gang, Kurzel consistently seeks to demystify violent myths through unflinching, psychologically intense cinema. Nitram, his 2021 drama based on events surrounding the Port Arthur massacre, pushes Kurzel’s provocation to an uncomfortable edge: it risks crossing from challenging art into harmful sensationalism.
Nitram is Kurzel’s bleakest work yet, a study of how profound isolation and untreated illness can create catastrophic consequences. The film fictionalizes aspects of Martin Bryant’s life—Nitram is ‘Martin’ spelled backwards—and follows the lead-up to the massacre through the eyes of an enigmatic young man played by Caleb Landry Jones. Kurzel and co-writer Shaun Grant track Nitram’s small, disordered life: awkward dinners with his parents, fumbling attempts to start a lawn-mowing business, and reckless displays like setting off fireworks in front of local children. His greasy hair and neglected appearance are immediately off-putting, but it is his unpredictable gestures and oddball mannerisms that leave the deepest chill.
Kurzel keeps Nitram inscrutable throughout. The film’s tension is driven by uncertainty: the audience never fully knows what state of mind the protagonist occupies. Early scenes, set in his parents’ home, present him as a man-child stuck in arrested development—refusing hygiene, antagonizing neighbors, and bickering at home. When Nitram meets Helen (Essie Davis), a reclusive, wealthy woman, a new relationship forms that at first appears tender and odd rather than violent. Helen lives in squalor with numerous dogs and little social contact; their mutual isolation creates a strange, semi-sexual companionship that allows Nitram to move into her house. For a time they enact an uneasy domesticity, with money and freedom enabling risky behavior.
The tone shifts sharply when Nitram stops taking his medication and becomes obsessed with firearms. Scenes that show him casually acquiring assault-style weapons—without the scrutiny or permits one would expect—are deeply unsettling and intended as a critique of lax gun control. Unfortunately, those sequences arrive late in the film’s arc. Kurzel spends the bulk of Nitram’s runtime exploring his interiority and deterioration, which can unintentionally generate sympathy for a character who later commits horrific crimes. By foregrounding his mental health decline without more clearly assigning responsibility, the film risks offering an exculpatory portrait of the perpetrator rather than a condemnatory one.
Comparison to other films about mass violence is inevitable. Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) presented a fictionalized study of a school killer while maintaining moral distance; Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique (2009), which depicted the Montréal massacre, deliberately avoided any sense of glorification. Nitram differs in that it uses identifiable real-world tragedy to interrogate questions about mental illness and gun legislation, but Kurzel’s empathetic approach to his protagonist muddies the film’s moral clarity. The result can feel manipulative: formal artistry and strong performances are used in service of a narrative that doesn’t make a decisive ethical argument.
That said, Nitram is undeniably accomplished in craft. Caleb Landry Jones gives a haunting, committed performance that holds the film; Essie Davis and Judy Davis provide distinct, memorable support. Kurzel’s visual language—sharply composed frames, a careful use of light and shadow, and an atmosphere of creeping dread—creates a persistent sense of unease. Cinematically, the movie achieves its objective as a study of alienation and the slow collapse of social bonds.
Where the film falters is in its emotional calculus. By invoking sympathy for Nitram without decisively reframing the narrative around victims or societal culpability, the film can feel like a dangerous exercise in humanizing a mass murderer. Given the real and recent pain surrounding the events that inspired the story, that choice is fraught and will likely provoke strong reactions. Audiences seeking a rigorous investigation of gun policy or a clear moral condemnation may find the film wanting; those more interested in character study and cinematic technique will recognize Kurzel’s achievements while also grappling with their discomfort.
Ultimately, Nitram is a technically accomplished, emotionally challenging film that asks provocative questions about isolation, illness, and access to lethal means. It succeeds as mood and performance-driven cinema but struggles to justify the intimacy it affords its subject. For some viewers, that intimacy will feel like an irresponsible softening of blame; for others, it will register as a troubling but necessary step toward understanding how such horrors occur. Either way, Nitram is unlikely to leave audiences indifferent.
8/24
