True History of the Kelly Gang
George MacKay is able to summon something in him where he is a man possessed. A lot of it happens in his eyes. We see it the longer he goes on his determined, journey to the front lines in “1917.” As Ned Kelly begins his personal journey towards a wild outlaw in 19th Century Australian, we see that look again. His eyes get big, and he appears capable of anything, at any time. In this furious performance, Justin Kurzel’s film already has more lasting power than the Heath Ledger-starring biopic from the early 2000s, which I didn’t even remember existed until I went to watch this film.
Adapted from the novel by Peter Carey, the screenplay by Shaun Grant breaks the story of Ned Kelly into three acts- his childhood, his manhood, and his final act, where the Kelly Gang plans a big heist of a train, leading to a bloody end. The central relationship through it all is between Ned and his mother, played by the fantastic Essie Davis. We first see Ned as a child, watching as his mother demeans herself with a British Sergeant (Charlie Hunnam); they live in a shack in the Australian badlands. His father is not much of a factor in his life, and Ned is the center of Ellen Kelly’s life, along with her other children. Ned grows up with a disrespect towards authority that his mother nurtures, even selling him to a notorious criminal, Harry Power (Russell Crowe), where he gets his first taste for violence and vengeance, one that he will grow to depend on when he becomes an adult, and decides to try and take back what he feels his family is owed.
There’s an energy to this film that carries us through an otherwise basic piece of biopic story structure. Much of that comes from the actors themselves, although Kurzel’s direction is a contributor, as well, in the way he sees and stages these events. The main performances in the film are MacKay and Davis, and watching these two live wire characters interact with everyone else is worth watching the film for on their own, but there is great support from Nicholas Hoult as Constable Fitzpatrick, who befriends Kelly before ending up on the opposite ends of the law (and has one of the most memorable scenes in the film when he is interrogating Kelly’s girlfriend, played by Thomasin McKenzie, with a gun pointed at her young son), McKenzie, Earl Cave as Dan Kelly, and Crowe in his brief moments onscreen. The ending of this film, with Kelly and his gang surrounded, and with little chance of survival, is the culmination of a personal journey from a young man who hesitated to pull the trigger to one who feels like he knows his destiny is to meet a violent end, with a reunion with his mother punctuating his story with poignant emotion. There was no chance for Kelly’s life to go any other way than it did- Kurzel’s film allows us to feel the weight of what that meant, without sugarcoating the grim details.
