Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel has delivered a fairly eclectic range of films in his relatively short time as a director, beginning with 2011’s ultra-violent but critically acclaimed Snowtown. He followed that up with a pair of films with actor Michael Fassbender, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 2015 and the video game adaptation Assassin’s Creed in 2016. I especially enjoyed his fictionalized historical drama True History of the Kelly Gang (2019), with an all-star cast that included George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult, Charlie Hunnam, and Russell Crowe, which he followed by the biographical drama Nitram in 2021.
His latest work, The Order (based on the book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, adapted by Zach Baylin) is a based-on-true-events crime drama set in 1983 and concerning an FBI agent (Jude Law) who spots a pattern in recent bank robberies, armored car heists, and counterfeiting operations in the Pacific Northwest. He and his partner (Jurnee Smoullett) set out to prove that a white supremacist group known as The Order, led by charismatic leader Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) is gathering funds for an army big enough to disrupt the U.S. government. Tye Sheridan co-stars as a young local police officer eager to help in the investigation; and Marc Maron is on hand as radio talk show host Alan Berg, who was assassinated by The Order in 1984, marking one of the first times the group showed it was willing to take violent action.
In addition to being sharply told, tense, and perfectly written, The Order is also scarily prescient and marks an absolute career high point for both Kurzel and star Law. I had a chance recently to sit down with Kurzel to discuss the film and why a filmmaker from Australia would connect so deeply to such a sadly unique American story. Please enjoy our conversation…
I’m getting the sense that you went right from making your documentary Ellis Park into doing this. Was it a bit jarring transitioning between these two very different projects?
They are pretty extreme in terms of their differences. The documentary is set in Sumatra, about this incredible wildlife sanctuary and these amazing people who save animals from being illegally taken from the jungles, and this amazing musician, Warren Ellis, who helped set up the park.
And then I’ve got The Order, set in America in the 1980s—this genre film about some issues that seem pretty relevant today. I actually find it helps; I actually love when projects overlap and they kind of speak to each other a bit, and you do find that there’s something going on. For example, the landscape in Sumatra was just so extraordinarily vast and lush and exotic, and you really felt like sitting under these volcanoes made you so insignificant. I’m sure there was something about that that brought me to the landscapes in The Order. I was aware of how large these landscapes were in Calgary and embraced them in terms of the lenses I used. And that feeling of the characters being swamped by the greatness of this place and making a lot of what was going on in the story seem smaller next to the enormity of history and wonder that was around them.
I can’t wait to see that documentary and I love Warren Ellis. Any time a director makes a period film, it feels like there’s a reason for it, and I’m wondering why you wanted to tell this story from the 1980s today. Why did you want to tell this story now?
I’d really been searching for an American film to do, and probably my biggest influences in film were American when I was growing up. They were like classic American films by Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin. I remember the first time I saw Mississippi Burning by Alan Parker, I just thought there was the atmosphere and rawness, and you felt the world in a way you didn’t feel from other films from other countries. So there was always this cultural pool that I was interested in. I read this script, and within the first two pages, it felt like one of those films, and then I get to page 15 and realized there was this heist, and I was like “Wait, the robbers are terrorists? And this is based on a true story? And there’s this book called The Turner Diaries that’s still being used?”
It was me having a nostalgia hit and finding something that was now, this really isn’t a huge stretch. And you’re always looking for films that can sit within a genre of sorts, but have an underlying truth that somehow hits the zeitgeist a little bit of today. It has this special ingredient in all of it that made me feel like I needed to make this.
I didn’t know the main story going into this, but I knew the Alan Berg story very well. I remember reading an article about his murder in Rolling Stone or Esquire not long after it happened, and I knew his death was the inspiration of Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio play, which Oliver Stone made into a film. I found it fascinating that you included a bit of that in The Order.
The Order killed him. He was the first person they killed that they saw as a political assassination. That becomes the turning point in the case where they went from heists and robberies to something darker, more political, and much more dangerous. His presence is really important to the story. Also, there was something very modern about him. Marc Maron has one of the most amazing podcasts, one of the originals, and has formed into this extraordinary voice and listener. Alan Berg was, in a way, one of the ones who started it all in constantly having a dialogue with listeners, having strong views, living by those views, and not being afraid of hate speech. It was an important part of the film to us. It’s when the story of The Order started to expand much more nationally than what was before.
You’ve worked with Nicholas Hoult before, and I think a lot of American actors would be scared to take on the role that he plays here. He seems fearless and daring, but this is something very different for him. Tell me about his involvement in this. Hearing him say these words really shook me.
Yeah, I think it shook him and us as well, especially in the one scene where he’s speaking at the Aryan Nation meeting. You suddenly hear Nick speak in such a powerful and committed way, which he had to be to get that influence in the room and show that kind of pull. It’s really confronting, and it was a heavy day; we shot that very quickly. Usually the mechanics of a film around a scene gives you that lovely bit of distance and helps, but this felt very real because we shot it so fast.
I agree with you, I think he’s so brave in the roles that he does. He’s always so imaginative and out of left field. But there was something about working with this grounded, real-life character that I was excited by with Nick. I’d worked with him before, but there’s this natural pull with Nick—you lean into him. He’s got a look to him, a presence that makes people feel at ease. And that was something I was really curious about, and in our initial discussions, I wondered “What is that pull that Bob Matthews had? What is the secret ingredient?” What makes a subject like this be able to create an army or a community? Part is Bob Matthews and part is that environment, whether people feel heart, listened to, or do they feel disenfranchised. What is that dynamic that creates that kind of energy? Nick was scared of doing this, and we had to have some real discussions about how this was going to land and how that character was going to land in terms of his pull. Is he going to be too likable on screen? There are a few things you’re wrestling with when you’re bringing a character like that to life.
Best of luck with this, Justin. Thanks for your time.
Cheers, man. Thanks.