X
- 2020
- R
- IFC Films
- 2 h 4 m
- 2020
- R
- IFC Films
- 2 h 4 m
Summary Set amidst the grueling badlands of 19th-century Australia, legendary outlaw Ned Kelly (George MacKay) grows up under the bloody and uncompromising rule of the English. Food is scarce, survival is filled with daily strife, and every opportunity the colonizers take to make their victims feel powerless is inflicted with searing brutality. ...
Directed By: Justin Kurzel
Written By: Shaun Grant, Peter Carey
- 2020
- R
- IFC Films
- 2 h 4 m
- 2020
- R
- IFC Films
- 2 h 4 m
True History of the Kelly Gang
75
5.5
Where to Watch
Summary Set amidst the grueling badlands of 19th-century Australia, legendary outlaw Ned Kelly (George MacKay) grows up under the bloody and uncompromising rule of the English. Food is scarce, survival is filled with daily strife, and every opportunity the colonizers take to make their victims feel powerless is inflicted with searing brutality. ...
Directed By: Justin Kurzel
Written By: Shaun Grant, Peter Carey
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 27 Critic Reviews
75
85% Positive
23 Reviews
23 Reviews
15% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 27 Critic Reviews
75
85% Positive
23 Reviews
23 Reviews
15% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Lithe and volatile and recklessly stylized to the hilt, True History of the Kelly Gang has moves like Jagger, but a head still teeming with language and history.
There is a terrible majesty to the landscape and to the story, and Kurzel gives it room to breathe.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 36 User Ratings
5.5
36% Positive
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
42% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
22% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 36 User Ratings
5.5
36% Positive
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
42% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
22% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
Honestly even though this is like what it would be like if it happened In another dimension the facts are still there for the most part just played out a bit differently but man I really loved this movie it has an almost punk rock vibe to it and the way it was filmed and the actors are so on point I really enjoyed the hell out of this movie. We need more films like this
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Visually, however, True History speaks volumes. In tandem with MacKay, whose incendiary performance finds method in Ned’s growing madness, Kurzel and his crew of merry, malicious pranksters blow the dust off a calcified outlaw history to bring something elemental and transgressive to the screen.
It is a very grueling spectacle, often brilliant, sometimes slightly redundant and perhaps not able to maintain the storytelling rush of its first act. But it is always weirdly plausible in its pure strangeness and in the oddly poignant moments
True History of the Kelly Gang may not be history as recorded by historians, but it’s history as recorded by a director with verve and vision. In this case, that’s enough.
In more than one sense, Justin Kurzel’s aggressively strange film queers the myth of the oft-lionized Ned Kelly.
It’s all heading somewhere special as Kelly muses on masculinity and colonialism, but then coherence gives way to flashy visuals and bursts of expressionistic violence.
I liked this film. I was born in Japan. I never heard of Ned Kelly. I am a history buff. This film made me feel leaning his life on Youtube and Wikipedia. Sometimes, it was hard for me to understand the plot. I guess that this movie was made for Australians who knew his life. After I watched it for the first time, then I googled and understand it. If you don't know Ned Kelly, please Google and watch it.
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Is the truth relevant in myth-making?
Based on Peter Carey's 2000 novel, written for the screen by Shaun Grant, and directed by Justin Kurzel, True History of the Kelly Gang is a film about the lies at the heart of cultural myth-making, about how every myth is a fiction, a subjective interpretation and reframing of real events. Importantly, as with the novel, True History is itself a work of fiction which invents characters and incidents, weaving such elements into what we know of the real Ned Kelly. Rugged, fierce, bleak, and exhausting, if you're looking for casual entertainment along the lines of Gregor Jordan's Ned Kelly (2003), you'll be disappointed, but if you want something complex and esoteric, you could do worse than True History.
The film takes the form of a memoir Ned Kelly (George MacKay) is writing for his daughter, so she can know the man behind the myth. Meeting him at age 12 (played by an exceptional Orlando Schwerdt), we're introduced to his mother Ellen (a ferocious Essie Davis), his drunk father John 'Red' Kelly (Gentle Ben Corbett), his two younger siblings, Sgt. O'Neill (Charlie Hunnam proving once again he can't do accents; I think he's supposed to be Welsh), and Harry Power (Russell Crowe), a notorious bushranger. Years later, the now-adult Kelly meets the hedonistic Constable Alexander Fitzpatrick (a slimy Nicolas Hoult) and the good-natured Mary Hearn (the exceptional Thomasin McKenzie), with whom he begins a relationship. However, after a disagreement with Fitzpatrick, Kelly finds himself on the run, accompanied by his friend and possible lover Joe Byrne (Sean Keenan), his brother Dan (Earl Cave), and Dan's friend Steve Hart (Louis Hewison). Recruiting young men fed up with British colonialism, Kelly forms the Kelly Gang, and as their reputation grows, the authorities determine to hunt them down at all costs.
Much of the detail in True History is fabricated, as it was in the novel. For example, Mary is a fictitious character, and as far as we know, Kelly had no children. Another fabrication is the Kelly Gang's tendency to proclaim themselves "The Sons of Sieve", a reference to an Irish secret society which Carey invented. Perhaps the most controversial fictional element concerns Kelly's sexuality. There's a strong Oedipal undertone throughout the first act, and later, Kelly is presented in a manner that suggests bisexuality. The scene where we first meet Joe, for example, sees him and Kelly playfully wrestling for a book, and later he has a conversation with a naked Fitzpatrick with unmistakable **** chemistry.
The issue of lies, myth-making, and fabrication is introduced immediately, with the opening caption telling us, "nothing you are about to see is true". Subsequently, one of the first lines of dialogue is Kelly warning his daughter about people who will "confuse fiction for fact", saying that the only account she can accept as true is his own, because "every man should be the author of his own history". The irony in all of this is that in real life, Kelly never wrote such a manuscript for his daughter because he never had a daughter, thus creating more layers atop the dichotomy of calling the film "True History" and immediately asserting none of it is true.
The film falls somewhere between the two extremes of Kelly scholarship – a hero for the common man or a psychopathic murderer. Although we see his horrible childhood and years of British oppression, so to do we see the callous murder of three policemen in 1878; all unarmed, two already surrendered. The Ned Kelly seen here is a savage – he's nothing like the anti-establishment punk played by Mick Jagger in Tony Richardson's Ned Kelly (1970) nor the charming rogue played by Heath Ledger in Jordan's film – he's a violent blood-thirsty sociopath who kills because he enjoys it.
The film's greatest strength, however, is the mesmeric cinematography by Ari Wegner. She excels especially during the climactic shootout at Glenrowan - a shot of police in the dark that renders them luminescent; a confusing and claustrophobic POV shot from inside Kelly's helmet; a shot of a raging fire, the flames highlighted against the pitch-black night. It's an exceptionally beautiful scene.
In terms of problems, Hunnam's accent is hilariously bad, and the film is a little slow in places, with the narrative sagging a couple of times. And, as I already said, those expecting something in the vein of Jordan's 2003 film will be sorely disappointed.
A starkly beautiful, psychologically taxing, thematically complex film, True History acknowledges the difficulty of getting to the reality of such a widely known symbol as Ned Kelly - a process during which truth is jettisoned early. However, just how important is the truth anyway? Why not let the legend supersede fact? Does truth really matter all that much when dealing with something as significant as a national mythos?
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Even though this film claims that none of it is true, it’s based on the notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly (played as an adult by George MacKay). It’s set in the 19th century, when the English still ruled the continent with much resentment from the inhabitants. Kelly was primed at an early age to be hard and unsparing and this narrative follows him in his unpleasant personal life, right up to the anarchist rebellion he led. The entire film has a brutal, bleak overtone that makes it hard to handle. It’s biggest asset is director Justin Kurzel, who is one of the great visual stylists working today (previous films include Assassin’s Creed and Macbeth both starring Michael Fassbinder). This one continues his impressive skill at creating memorable mise en scène and overstated dramatic moments. There’s hardly a pleasant moment and no fulfilling resolution, but as a piece of filmic art, it’s impressive.
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Awards
Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards
• 3 Wins & 12 Nominations
Australian Writers' Guild
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Screen Music Awards, Australia
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
