True History Of The Kelly Gang begins like it ends, with our lead looking through a rectangular opening at things that would sear itself into your retinas if you were anyway normal. But in the 19th century colony of Victoria nothing was anyway normal. As Kelly himself famously said, such is life.
The boy Edward Kelly (Orlando Schwerdt) grew up hard in an unforgiving land. Raised by a strong Irish mother (Essie Davis, amazing) and an ineffectual father he saw early that life was fucked and to survive you had to be willing to do anything. Anything. Sold by his mother to a Ellen to a bushranger called Harry Power (Russell Crowe) who schooled him in the ways of bloodletting and thievery, he spent half his short life away learning to become a man (George Mackay) until he finally returned home and saw the British lawmen who had shattered his early life were still around and still making things tough for his family. So he decided enough was enough and a legend was born.
19th century Australia has cropped up twice on our cinema screens in the last 6 months or so. Firstly in Jennifer Kent's unrelenting The Nightingale and now in THOFKG. Two films that would make your knees shake with the brutality on display. Kelly Gang isn't quite as horrifying as The Nightingale but it isn't far off either as Justin Kurzel definitely does not shy away from the horrors of frontier life. It's carried by a powerful performance from George Mackay, who portrays Kelly as a sexually fluid, blank faced manchild about 2 seconds from madness at all times and his physical presence is something to behold, his long, lanky torso as gnarled as the trees dotting the landscape. He's something else. It's a pity the film around him, while good, has such a disjointed feel to it.
At 124 minutes it struggles to hold your attention at times and yet it still feels like there's a much longer version out there. Characters played by big names (Charlie Hunnam's venal sheriff for example) vanish without a trace, the passage of time is confusing and hard to follow and annoyingly massively important sections of Kelly lore whizz by in montage form. Ned's entire teenage years, years where his legend began, are skipped over and the creation and formation of the infamous gang passes by in the blink of an eye. With the title of the film being what it is you would think we'd get to see a bit more of how they operated. Thankfully a combination of strong acting and some beautifully terrifying imagery helps paper over the cracks.
THOTKG has the feel of the revisionist westerns (or southerns here) that came out of America in the 1970's. Films with a surreal edge that dismantled the glorified legends and mysticism created in the Golden era of the genre, films that showed frontier life for what it really was, where murder and rape were the norm not the exception, where heroes were murderers too. There's atrocity on both sides of the fence here with the film showing the moment Ned picked his path in life, not as heroic, but as flat out murder. It's an interesting choice, one that should make you sympathise less with Ned but you never do. And for one reason. The Brits. Never not at it of course, were the catalyst for the violence with a chilling performance from Nicholas Hoult as Constable Fitzpatrick leading the charge. His Fitzpatrick is a despicable creation but one you won't be able to look away from. The baby scene, that's the one that will stick with you...
True History Of The Kelly Gang is an odd, messy film but it's a good one. At the very beginning of the story you're told nothing you'll see is true but at the end of the film you'll suspect what you've just seen is far more accurate than any of the depictions of the story so far.
In selected cinemas now.
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