Based on Peter Carey’s novel, the story of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang as they flee from authorities during the 1870s.
Seems our desire to romanticize and customize our vision of outlaws of the past in order to idolize them today has no boundaries when the truth is involved. So it goes with the latest to catch our fancy, Ned Kelly and his band of bushranger horse thieves and murderers in the bleak badlands of Australia in the late 1800s. Based on the book by Peter Carey and with a screenplay by Shaun Grant, director Justin Kurtzel brings us (as the title says) The (not true) History of the Kelly Gang. The (Not True) that briefly appears at the beginning of his film is our “red flag” that, like other books and films about this outlaw, most of what you see and read is probably not true. Kelly seems to invite invention. In Australia, he is seen by many as a “Robin Hood” while the real truth is he was a murderous criminal. Kurtzel brings us his Kelly as both a criminal, but one with a raging desire for revenge for the death of his father, the false imprisonment of his mother and for the unrelenting oppression of the English regiments in Australia.
The film stars George MacKay (recently seen in the award-winning “1917”) as Ned Kelly, Essie Davis as his mother, Ellen, and Nicholas Hoult as Constable Fitzpatrick. Russell Crowe appears in a potent cameo role as Harry Power, a harsh, rugged bushranger who shelters for a while with the Kelly family after the death of “Red Kelly, Ned’s father and Ellen’s husband. Ellen sells Ned off to go with Power for “training” to become a tough insurrectionist against the harsh English regiments controlling the area. He’s a good student and Power is a hard teacher. The unrelenting and daring grown-up Ned returns home to go face to face with Fitzpatrick in an unrelenting clash to the death.
This is where things start to get a little weird, though this part is true. Seeing a picture of the ship The Monitor, Kelly jumps to the idea of building suits of armor to protect him and his gang in gunfights and to scare opponents at the same time. And just in case the armor isn’t enough the gang dresses in women’s clothes because Power duped Ned into believing he was descended from the Sons of Sieve, an imaginary outlaw gang in Ireland who wore dresses in their skirmishes with the English. It made an exciting story and an impression on the young Ned.
Mixed in with the cross-dressing, there are numerous scenes between Ellen and Ned that skirt right up to the edge of an outright incestuous relationship between the two. Then mix that in with a definite suggestion of homoerotic tension between Ned and gang member Joe Byrne, played by Sean Keenan. Later, when the gang takes hostages at the station near Euroa, Victoria, where they plan to rob a bank, they put white hoods on all the hostages making them look like the familiar hooded clan then at work in the United States.
The film has been criticized for all the liberties taken with the “truth” of the Kelly Gang’s escapades. This isn’t the first film to stray from the historical story. In a 1970 film, Kelly was played by Mick Jagger in a somewhat “campy” version of all the fun and hilarity to be found playing murderers as Robin Hoods. Then there was the Heath Ledger version, a more romanticized story of the gang’s deeds. I see no reason not to embellish history however you wish. If you want the truth of the Kelly Gang, Google it.
Kurtzel’s film is rough, gritty and violent. Orlando Swerdt is stunning as the young Ned. The scene where he experiences his first killings is breathtaking as he struggles to free himself of the dying man atop him. His face is a beautiful canvas that he paints with the many emotions of a child determined to not be intimidated by his circumstances. At the age of 11, Ned saves a drowning boy and is given a beautiful green sash by the boy’s family as recognition. The boy’s family offers to pay for Ned to go to school but his mother merely sneers at the woman and turns her away. Some writers have suggested the idea of the mother as a Babadook, a kind of mythical creature that embodies the grief of a mother who is struggling to raise her children alone yet the Babadook causes her to turn on her strongest, closest male child and both overprotect and castigate him. That metaphor is certainly present in this telling of Kelly’s story.
The action is swift and unrelenting and MacKay as the grown Ned is equally ruthless in the progression of his onslaught of the English who keep their boots to the backs of poor Australian outback farmers. He can be both the sensitive, thoughtful writer who produces pages and pages of both political attacks and messages to his lover, Mary Hearn, played sweetly but resolutely by Thomasin McKenzie. One of his letters, known as the Jerilderie letter still survives.
The film surges through the story of Ned Kelly in a most fascinating way. The costumes are, for the most part, effectively ratty, dirty and torn. Yet Ned’s is military in its presence. Color is utilized effectively in the film as only the scenes with the wealthy and entitled contain any kind of vivid color. Other scenes are set almost colorless. I had only a few minor disappointments. I think the green sash is extremely important in the story, but it faded away rather quickly in the details. That’s true, however, and we know this story isn’t true. Kurtzel told us. I’m not sure, anyway, if details in a historical account of a famous outlaw are important. What’s important is in the telling: the surging, relentless violence of an indescribable man in an untamed lawless land. Got it. Whether they really wore those dresses or not?
Available on Digital and Video On-Demand April 24th
