WILD COLONIAL BOYS (THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG)

  

The legend of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly has fascinated artists and audiences across generations - especially filmmakers.

A bushranger of Irish heritage, the 19th Century robber and outlaw has achieved a Che Guevara style status in his homeland and around the world.

Admiration for Kelly's anti-authoritarian streak is so hardwired into Australian culture that the opening ceremony for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games featured hundreds of performers dressed as him.

Part of the fixation with Kelly stems from the iconic image of him donning specially made armour to repel police bullets.

But despite this innovation, he still ended up being hung in the Old Melbourne Gaol.

Even his final words - reputed to be "such is life" - are memorable.

Such is the fascination with Kelly, there here have been at least five movies about his life.

The first was Charles Tait's 1906 silent film 'The Story of the Kelly Gang' which premiered at Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall and did much to popularise the legend associated with him.

With Frank Mills in the role of Ned, its depiction of the Kelly Gang's conflict with the police resulting in the murder of three officers in Stringybank Creek and the gun battle at the Glenrowan Inn was a huge draw with audiences.

It played to packed houses across Australia and popularised him as an outlaw.

Australian director Rupert Kathner returned to the story in 1951 with 'The Glenrowan Affair' which starred Aussie Rules player Bob Chitty as Ned but the film was critically panned.

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger donned the metal helmet for director Tony Richardson in the 1970 movie 'Ned Kelly' which also failed to enthuse audiences or critics.

However Australian director Gregor Jordan's 2003 take on the story, 'Ned Kelly' was more of a critical success with Heath Ledger in the lead, working from a screenplay by 'The Guard' and 'Calvary' director John Michael McDonagh.

With a cast that also included Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts, Rachel Griffiths and Laurence Kinlan, it performed respectably at the box office 

There was a four part miniseries 'The Last Outlaw' on the Seven network in Australia in 1980, starring John Jarratt as Kelly.

Johnny Cash and Midnight Oil also sang about him and the novelist Peter Carey won the 2001 Man Booker Prize for his acclaimed 'True History of the Kelly Gang'.

Carey's novel has inspired Australian director Justin Kurzel's movie of the same name - a visually striking production with English actor George Mackay in the lead role.

Just like Carey's book, the movie is told from Kelly's perspective and repeatedly throughout the film, Kurzel and his screenwriter Shaun Grant remind us of his need to record his own life and not allow anyone else to craft it.

The Kelly depicted in Kurzel's film may surprise many of those watching, portraying him as a sensitive, poetic figure and a wronged, gender bending rebel.

Kurzel's film charts the legend from his early childhood to his death.

At the start of the movie, his Irish mother Essie Davis' Ellen keeps the family fed and watered by selling her body.

The film has barely begun when Orlando Schwerdt's young Ned witnesses Ellen performing a sexual act on Charlie Hunnam's sleazy, predatorial Sergeant O'Neill.

Ned's father, Gentle Ben Corbett's Red Kelly's seeks solace through drinking and, as a result, his relationship with Ellen is strained and often turbulent.

When his father is arrested for dismembering a cow which Ned has foraged and which the family has eaten, Ellen and the family struggle.

She sells Ned to Russell Crowe's outlaw figure Harry Power who treats the boy like a son.

Power, who likes the good life and teaches Ned and his siblings a foul mouthed song about the police, loves passing on surrogate fatherly advice to him.

But when his life lessons start to involve Ned helping him violently rob stagecoaches or pointing a pistol at O'Neill in a brothel, it disturbs the young Ned.

Mackay's adult Ned returns to the family homestead, having made a little money and found fame as a bare knuckle fighter.

But the home he returns to remains deeply dysfunctional and is being pestered by a new, sinister policeman Nicholas Hoult's politely spoken Constable Fitzpatrick.

The two initially strike up a friendship in a brothel where Ned gets involved with Thomasin Mackenzie's young Irish prostitute Mary and her baby.

But events soon turn sour when Fitzpatrick fails to deliver on a promise to protect Ned's errant brother, Earl Cave's Dan.

The antagonism with Fitzpatrick escalates and when Ellen is drawn into the mix, things get downright nasty with Ned and his mate, Sean Keenan's Joe Byrne spearheading a backlash against the authorities.

Anyone expecting a straightforward telling of the Kelly Gang story clearly doesn't know Kurzel.

His previous three films - the 2011 crime drama 'Snowtown,' his 2015 adaptation of 'Macbeth' and his 2016 adventure 'Assassin's Creed' were all notable for their visual flair, establishing him as the most exciting filmmaker to emerge from Australia since Peter Weir.

However 'Assassin's Creed' was also a bit of a narrative mess.

'The True History of the Kelly Gang' is more successful on that front and is brimming full of ideas.

On one level, it toys with the issue of family and loyalty, with Ned's relationship with Ellen bordering on the Oedipal and a sense of betrayal hanging over proceedings throughout the film.

Ned's rebel image extends beyond anti-authoritarianism and into challenging sexual convention.

So while Ned is involved with Mary, Kurzel, Grant and Mackay hint that Byrne is also a lover.

The gang also don dresses and the relationship with Ellen is certainly more obsessive than a typical mother and son relationship.

Kurzel's film is fascinated with the corrosive effects of colonialism and corruption on those who are expected to live under it.

But there is also a dreamlike quality to the film - not least during the climactic battle between the Kelly Gang and the police at Glenowan.

If the cast do a fine job, the real star of the show is Ari Wegner's cinematography which increasingly turns the punishing Victoria countryside increasingly into something resembling a Medieval fairytale.

Kurzel and Wegner riff on the Western in the film but there is a definite supernatural quality to the image of the police descending on the Glenrowan Inn, like Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane.

There is a sense that the land has turned not just the Kellys but those enforcing the law into wild monsters, with little regard for right or wrong.

Mackay is compelling as the older Ned, becoming increasingly unhinged as events spiral out of control.

He is ably assisted by Schwerdt, Keenan, Mackenzie, Davis, Crowe, Hunnam, Cave and especially Hoult, whose politely spoken copper reveals himself increasingly to be corrupt and unhinged. 

If there is a criticism, it is that Davis, who is very effective in tapping into the Oedipal elements in Grant's screenplay, and Corbett's attempts at an Irish accent are wobbly - taking in many Northern counties along with Dublin.

That may not be obvious to audiences outside of Ireland but for those from there, it can be a little jarring at times, distracting from what is a pretty decent performance.

At times, Kurzel's film is so teeming with ideas that you worry that he is going to lose control but he just about keeps it all together.

And by the time the credits roll, you know this is a Ned Kelly movie that you are not going to easily forget and which will you will revisit in years to come.

('The True History of the Kelly Gang' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on February 28, 2020 and was released on DVD and made available for streaming on July 6, 2020)