True History of the Kelly Gang
Short description
True History of the Kelly Gang follows Ned Kelly, the son of an Irish immigrant family living in poverty in nineteenth-century Australia. After his father dies and his mother is arrested, Ned is drawn into a world of bushranging, first under the outlaw Harry Power and later at the head of his own gang. What begins as survival hardens into open defiance of the colonial authorities, and Ned becomes the most wanted man in the colony. The film is based on Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name.
Justin Kurzel directed the film from a screenplay by Shaun Grant, with Liz Watts, Hal Vogel and Kurzel producing. It is Kurzel's fifth feature, arriving between Assassin's Creed and Nitram. George MacKay plays Ned Kelly, with Essie Davis as Ellen Kelly, Russell Crowe as Harry Power, Nicholas Hoult as Sergeant Fitzpatrick, Charlie Hunnam as Sergeant O'Neil and Orlando Schwerdt as the young Ned. The production was mounted across Australia, the United Kingdom and France, with 69 credited cast members and 91 credited crew.
The film was released in late 2019. On IMDb, critics gave it 6.9 out of 10 from 167 reviews, while on TMDB audiences rated it 5.9 out of 10 from 365 votes, a modest gap between the two groups. The story of Ned Kelly had been told on screen before, but this adaptation centres on Carey's novelistic retelling rather than the folk hero of popular memory.
What's left behind the scenes
- Despite the title, the film tells a fictionalized story of the life of the famous outlaw Ned Kelly and his accomplices.
- The scene in which police tie Joe Byrne's body (played by Sean Keanan) to a tree is based on true events. During a fire at the Glenrowan Inn, which occurred after Kelly's arrest, two police officers and one civilian rushed into the burning building in hopes of rescuing the remaining gang members. They managed to retrieve only the body of Joe Byrne; the bodies of two other gang members (Dan Kelly and Steve Hart, who had committed suicide by the time the building ignited) burned inside. Byrne's corpse was taken to town and hung on the door of the police station, where it was photographed by journalists.
- The film shows Harry Power (played by Russell Crowe) living in an armored hut. In reality, he lived in an ordinary hut on the slopes of a mountain in the Australian state of Victoria. He slept with a sawed-off shotgun close at hand so as not to be caught off guard while sleeping. In 1870, however, he was captured precisely while he was asleep.
- Regarding the frame width to height (the so-called aspect ratio), the height value decreases throughout the entire film.
- The cell scene featuring Essie Davis (who played Mary) and Thomasin McKenzie (Ellen) was filmed in a complex built in 1909 on the grounds of the Old Melbourne Gaol (a former prison turned museum), where Ellen Kelly actually served time for the attempted murder of a constable (played in the film by Nicholas Hoult).
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