True His­to­ry of the Kel­ly Gang

There’s a moment ear­ly on in True His­to­ry of the Kel­ly Gang where Rus­sell Crowe’s gruff bushranger, Har­ry Pow­er, man­ages to las­so Char­lie Hunnam’s Sergeant O’Neil by his tes­ti­cles, threat­en­ing to yank them off unless the com­pro­mised cop­per plays along with his sadis­tic game. It’s a sit­u­a­tion you may well find your­self empathis­ing with, as this is a film which is extreme­ly painful to sit through. All you can do is keep tak­ing deep breaths and wait for the aching sen­sa­tion to pass.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly butchered Mac­beth, direc­tor Justin Kurzel, one­time heir appar­ent of the aus­tere Antipodean art­house, offers a bold reimag­in­ing of the life and crimes of anoth­er fabled mad­man, Ned Kel­ly. The film opens with the alarm bell-sound­ing state­ment ​“noth­ing you are about to see is true,” which is intend­ed to sub­vert the expec­ta­tion for objec­tive his­tor­i­cal truth implied by its title, but also inad­ver­tent­ly under­mines its nar­ra­tive authority.

There’s always been the temp­ta­tion to print the leg­end where Kelly’s sto­ry is con­cerned. As Australia’s most noto­ri­ous and cher­ished folk hero, tales of his bloody clash­es with the British estab­lish­ment in the late 19^th cen­tu­ry are deeply ingrained in the nation­al psy­che. It’s admirable of Kurzel, then, to tack­le this sub­ject from a fresh, revi­sion­ist angle, with Peter Carey’s 2001 nov­el pro­vid­ing the basis for Shaun Grant’s screenplay.

The prob­lem is that, in addi­tion to being large­ly fic­tion­alised and there­by effec­tive­ly redun­dant as a por­trait of a real-life fig­ure, the whole thing has the look and feel of a mis­judged fash­ion cam­paign which has been con­ceived around the theme ​‘colo­nial chic’.

Half of the male cast look as though they’ve just strolled in off the set of a Hol­lis­ter com­mer­cial: chests bared; mus­cles strain­ing; hair ele­gant­ly dishev­elled. Mick Jag­ger famous­ly played Ned Kel­ly in a 1970 biopic by Tony Richard­son, and in True His­to­ry every­one appears to be on a mis­sion to out-Jag­ger one anoth­er. In par­tic­u­lar, George MacK­ay and Nicholas Hoult (play­ing Kel­ly and the cal­lous Con­sta­ble Fitz­patrick respec­tive­ly) are unbear­able. And they’re not alone. This is a film which, in a remark­ably sim­i­lar vein to Todd Phillips’ Jok­er, mis­takes flam­boy­ant pos­tur­ing and raw phys­i­cal­i­ty for authen­tic performance.

The women, mean­while, are allowed to oper­ate in two modes: screech­ing and sub­mis­sive or silent and sub­mis­sive. Female char­ac­ters – most notably Essie Davis as ma Kel­ly and Thomasin McKen­zie as Ned’s lover – are shown being rou­tine­ly abused and oppressed by male char­ac­ters, and not a lot else. Which although con­tex­tu­al­ly accu­rate is nonethe­less objec­tion­able in light of the men in ques­tion being afford­ed so much screen time to do lit­tle but prance about and scowl menacingly.

What a nas­ti­ly vio­lent film this is, too. The afore­men­tioned bol­lock-snar­ing inci­dent notwith­stand­ing, Kurzel dis­plays a wor­ry­ing pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with masochis­tic bod­i­ly harm. Like the epony­mous hanged man, I just couldn’t get no satisfaction.