Nitram (2021)

Caleb Landry Jones is really good as the eponymous character in this well told story of the build up to the worst gun-crime atrocity in Australian history. As the title may suggest, this young man has some mental health issues that his peers have enjoyed ridiculing over the years and that his parents Judy Davis and Anthony LaPaglia have spent some time trying to manage - and that's not been an easy task. He wants to learn to surf, but to buy a board he needs cash so starts his own lawn-cutting enterprise. He asks an eccentric, but wealthy, local woman "Helen" (Essie Davis) if he can cut her lawn but his mower breaks down so she asks him to walk her dogs instead. The pair start to bond over some Gilbert & Sullivan, and after a row with his long suffering mother he moves in and the pair plan a trip to Los Angeles together. Tragedy strikes before they can go, and he finds himself inheriting her wealth. This benefaction comes too late to stop another family tragedy but it does enable him to fund an unhealthy obsession with (very easily obtained) semi-automatic guns! Judy Davis offers a fine and nuanced performance here as his truly conflicted mother and Essie Davis is also really quite effective as his dog-loving friend who accepts him unreservedly. The film is presented as if these seemingly unrelated scenarios were a sequence of precariously stacked dominoes. Once one tumbles, there is an inevitability that "Nitram" will lose what little grasp he has and resort to something shocking - though perhaps not quite this! It is not a cheery film, indeed it is quite depressing to watch for much of the latter stages once hope has been well and truly extinguished from the young man's life; but it is most certainly worth watching if you are in the mood for something challenging.