TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG
A biopic that doesn’t beat around the bushranger. Plus! Which (movie) gang are you in?
Nothing you are about to see is true,” warns True History Of The Kelly Gang early on, setting the agenda for a forthright shake-up of historical-portrait tradition. Director Justin Kurzel pins himself to that promise with punk-literate purpose in his fierce, fractured take on Australian-outlaw legend. Rediscovering the psycho-pathological clout of Snowtown and Macbeth after Assassin’s Creed, Kurzel tackles the Ned Kelly story with the energy of a director confident enough to punch his weight, pummelling a much-told tale into new shapes.
Previous treatments were not so bold. While Story Of The Kelly Gang (1906) survives only in fragments, a 1970 star vehicle muffled Mick Jagger’s charisma. In 2003’s retelling, Heath Ledger’s punk-clown potential quickly vanished amid blandly romanticised myth-making.
Working from screenwriter Shaun Grant’s savvy riff on Peter Carey’s 2000 novel, Kurzel vigorously deconstructs such clichés. Played by Orlando Schwerdt as an achingly innocent kid and a ripped, ferrety George MacKay as an Iggy Pop-circa-1973 adult, this Kelly
is neither antihero nor villain, but a reactive blank slate, scrawled on by chafing forces. Family, class, history, environment and toxic father figures mount against him, forging Kelly as a cracked composite of guilt, anger, frustration: divisive as a myth, splintered as a man.
Crucially, Kurzel brings his themes of dismantled masculinity/myth to sizzling life in action. The period vernacular mirrors the scorchedearth landscapes Kelly crosses, knotty and gnarled. Likewise, the cast tackle twisted roles brazenly.
Nicholas Hoult makes louche work of a sadistic constable; Russell Crowe rediscovers his outsized form as a foulmouthed outlaw with loose ideas about the morals of underage drinking; and Essie Davis oozes feral intensity as the mother who sets and warps – Oedipal issues simmer - Ned’s tragic trajectory. Fine work also comes from Earl Cave as Ned’s younger brother, Dan - the son of Nick Cave, he’s no stranger to stormy Australian-outlaw drama.
Jed Kurzel’s brooding score emphasises the sense of a pressurised period portrait, strings straining like the landscape’s wind-whipped trees. Meanwhile, DoP Ari Wegner’s images draw elemental expressive force from those settings, before unleashing hell for the strobe-lashed climax. The hallucinatory pitch is diluted by a speech and an exchange with a teacher; both perhaps overstress the problems involved in recounting tussled-over history. True History Of The Kelly Gang has already landed that point, sometimes with the wallop of unvarnished truth, sometimes with historical liberties that dive for deeper psychological truths. Either way, Kurzel is back in volatile contention here. That
much is true. Kevin Harley