22 July ★★★½

IT’s hard not to compare Paul Greengrass’ 22 July from 2018 and Justin Kurzel’s Nitram (2022).

Both films deal with actual massacres of unsuspecting civilians – 22 July on the 2011 events on an island off Oslo in Norway and Nitram on the 1996 tragedy at Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia.

In 22 July, the massacre is shown and spoken about in graphic detail; Nitram doesn’t show it at all.

Greengrass looks at the massacre and its aftermath from all involved – the victims and survivors and their families, first-responders, hospital staff, lawyers, politicians and the killer himself; Kurzel concentrates solely on the killer and his family in the lead-up to the massacre occurring.

And here’s the key, significant difference. Greengrass is not interested in why Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people whereas Kurzel is only interested in why Martin Bryant committed his atrocity.

Yes, Greengrass devotes some time to having Breivik and others explain the horrible ethos behind their reasons, but not why Brievik himself went to this extreme when other followers of the same beliefs didn’t.

Is it better to pay homage to everyone involved in a real-life tragedy, particularly the victims and survivors, rather than concentrating on the killer’s background and psyche in an effort to understand why it happened?

Is it better to not show the actual killings rather than concentrating on them in great detail?

These are the questions I constantly wrestled with while watching 22 July and in the days following.

Particularly when I recall being annoyed at some of the click-bait criticism of Nitram; a brilliant film that didn’t deserve some critics’ refusal to even give it their usual type of review, i.e.  not give it a star rating.

There is no doubting the technical power and quality of Greengrass’ film. After all he has successfully fused documentary and feature story-telling before with Bloody Sunday in 2002 and United 93 in 2006.

The cast here is uniformily good, particularly young Jonas Strand Gravli who plays one of the survivors whose struggles to recover both physically and mentally represent the emotions of the entire nation.

Viljar’s quiet and dignified confrontation with Breivik in the courtroom is the film’s highlight.

It’s a very good, troubling film but, from the perspective of an observer trying to understand why rather than how it happened, I prefer Kruzel’s approach.

Watched on Netflix