AACTA Awards: Nitram dominates as Eric Bana picks up audience gong
Glamour was back in fashion as Australia’s best film and television actors turned out in force for this year’s AACTA Awards.
Stories from real life, including the 1996 Port Arthur massacre and the Black Summer bushfires two years ago, have dominated this year’s AACTA Awards, the peak honours for Australian film and television.
On Wednesday at the Sydney Opera House Justin Kurzel’s drama Nitram, a portrait of mass murderer Martin Bryant in the lead-up to the Port Arthur tragedy, was named best film and won all available acting awards for a feature film.
Other winners in the TV categories were Fires, about the summer bushfires and the impact on people who lived through them, and The Newsreader, which told a story of romance and intrigue in a TV station, against the background of newsmaking events of the 1980s.
After last year’s relatively low-wattage affair at The Star in Sydney, the AACTAs dialled up the glamour and helped draw attention to the achievements of cast, crew, creative artists and producers in Australian film and TV.
Some of Australia’s biggest screen stars turned out to celebrate with their industry peers at the awards, hosted by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.
Succession’s Sarah Snook, director Baz Luhrmann, Rebel Wilson, Rachel Griffiths, Deborah Mailman, Taika Waititi, Eric Bana, Simon Baker and Russell Crowe were among the roll call of household names.
David Gulpilil was honoured with the Longford Lyell Award, AACTA’s highest honour, and had learned of the award before his death on November 29. His final film, My Name is Gulpilil – about the final years of his life in Murray Bridge in South Australia – won the AACTA for best documentary. He appeared briefly in a clip, showing him attached to a ventilator, to say thank you. The Opera House audience rose in a standing ovation.
The AACTA Awards come after a challenging period for the screen industry, which nevertheless has clocked up record levels of activity. Screen Australia this week reported total expenditure of $1.9bn on screen production, including $874m spent on Australian stories told on film, TV and online drama.
AACTA president Crowe got the ceremony under way, urging people to be brief in their acceptance speeches but not to hold back on expressing opinion. He reminded prize winners of the word art in the academy’s name. “So be as political as you want to be,” he said. “Hold mirrors … shine lights into dark corners. Bring humanity to political discourse.”
In the end, few made overtly political statements in their speeches – although Fires producer Belinda Chayko called for urgent action on climate change.
Nitram dominated the film awards, and other well-regarded films went away empty-handed or without major awards. Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts as a woman coming to terms with life-changing injury, did not collect any awards. Another film, High Ground, about brutal frontier conflict in the Northern Territory, won for costume design. The Dry, based on Jane Harper’s novel, picked up awards for adapted screenplay and cinematography, and audience choice awards for star Bana and favourite film.
“What are the perks?” said Bana, collecting his award for favourite actor. “The Dry was embraced by the Australian public to a degree we couldn’t believe. I can’t believe that I’m more popular than you now, I’m truly humbled.”
Kurzel’s film Nitram has been controversial because of its subject, especially in Kurzel’s home state, Tasmania. (The title is Martin spelled backward.)
While the film does not re-enact the massacre, Kurzel has acknowledged the sensitivity surrounding the subject, and that his film could be perceived as a sympathetic portrait of the killer.
At the same time, Nitram has earned critical acclaim, being screened in competition at the Cannes film festival, where actor Caleb Landry Jones was named best actor this year.
The cast won the four main acting awards, including for Jones, Judy Davis as Bryant’s mother, Anthony LaPaglia as his father and Essie Davis as Helen Harvey, the eccentric heiress who befriended Bryant in the years before the tragedy.
Davis, who is married to Kurzel, said she and her future husband had only just met at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, and she understood the great sensitivity in the community about the tragedy.
“I am Tasmanian, and Justin and I had just gotten together when this happened,” she said. “It’s a very sore wound for most Tasmanians – we live there, people are very sensitive.” She was attracted to the screenplay, but at first she did not think there was a role in the film for her.
“I wasn’t considering being in it, but when (Kurzel) asked me to do it, I was kind of baffled,” she said. “But I would work with Justin in a heartbeat any time, and we kind of found the character together over lots of research and lots of play.”
In the television drama categories, The Newsreader won five awards, including for actors Anna Torv and William McInnes.
Bluey was named best children’s program, Hard Quiz won best comedy entertainment program, and the SBS broadcast of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras won best entertainment program. Scott Ryan was best lead actor in a drama for his role in Mr Inbetween.
Collecting the award for best miniseries, for the ABC’s Fires, producer Chayko said the series was made very quickly, with just 18 months from initial idea to the show going to air.
There were three reasons for making the show, she said: to honour the people who endured the 2019-20 summer bushfires, to give people space to grieve, and to make an urgent call to action against climate change. “People said it was too soon to tell this story,” she said, but waiting any longer would be “too late to save this wild and beautiful place”.
Presenters and award winners spoke with affection about some of the industry’s greats who died this year. Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis, named favourite TV host, paid dues to those who had nurtured the program across three decades, in particular Peter Cundall, who died on Sunday at age 94.
Rove McManus spoke of Bert Newton as a “titan of the game” and the last of the true, old-school all-rounders.
“He grew up with variety in his veins, and became one of the greatest entertainers Australia has ever seen,” he said. “Bert had personality and positivity to spare; his lightning-quick comedy reflexes knew no equal.”
Jack Thompson and film producer Rachel Perkins led an emotion-filled segment about the extraordinary life and career of Gulpilil. Thompson recalled that Gulpilil once said he wasn’t acting; he was just being himself in his on-screen roles.
“Mate, we all know better,” Thompson said. “He was a superb actor.”
Clips were shown from Gulpilil’s legacy of screen performances, with recorded tributes from Luhrmann, Hugh Jackman, Phillip Noyce, Natasha Wanganeen and others. Wanganeen, who as a 15-year-old appeared alongside Gulpilil in Rabbit-Proof Fence, said the late actor was a role model.
“Thank you for inspiring me and every other Aboriginal actor that has every graced our screens,” she said. “You opened doors for us that I never thought possible.”
Encore presentations of the 2021 AACTA Awards will be shown on Foxtel and Binge in following days.
