![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
XIV: Gregor Jordan, Ned Kelly (2003)
Like Jesse James, the story of Ned Kelly passed into popular story - the first feature film (a whole seventy minutes) was The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), Mick Jagger made a version in 1970, and Peter Carey wrote a novel, True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), which I have't yet read, despite best intentions. And that just scratches the surface.
Based on Robert Drewe's novel, Our Sunshine (1991), this tells the story of Kelly (Heath Ledger) from being falsely accused of stealing a horse to his capture by Hare (Geoffrey Rush), with Orlando Bloom as a gang member. Kelly is thus an outlaw from the start of the film, defined as such by the Victorian government and police and eventually even The Times. His robberies seem motivated to pay compensation to his friends' families who have been rounded up. The robbed deserved to be robbed - unless they consent (including sexually) or support the gang, they are fools.
There's an association of the gang with animals, cutting from them to kangaroos, dingos, kookabura, snakes, brids of prey and so forth, whilst the police burn the land in seeking their prey (although of course husbanding the land does involve controlled fires). Lest we miss the symbolism, Hare tells his men that the gang aren't animals and we get repeated shots of a caged lion.
Jordan had directed Ledger in Two Hands, a better film with a better performance. Ledger is tubby sideburns, Bloom eye candy, Rush apparently refusing to say more than a sentence at a time and looking grumpy. I gather it's not hugely accurate in terms of history, but there's nothing new there; it certainly didn't have the mythic qualities of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - but then it was at least half an hour shorter.
Totals: 14 [Cinema: 4; DVD: 9; TV: 1]
Like Jesse James, the story of Ned Kelly passed into popular story - the first feature film (a whole seventy minutes) was The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), Mick Jagger made a version in 1970, and Peter Carey wrote a novel, True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), which I have't yet read, despite best intentions. And that just scratches the surface.
Based on Robert Drewe's novel, Our Sunshine (1991), this tells the story of Kelly (Heath Ledger) from being falsely accused of stealing a horse to his capture by Hare (Geoffrey Rush), with Orlando Bloom as a gang member. Kelly is thus an outlaw from the start of the film, defined as such by the Victorian government and police and eventually even The Times. His robberies seem motivated to pay compensation to his friends' families who have been rounded up. The robbed deserved to be robbed - unless they consent (including sexually) or support the gang, they are fools.
There's an association of the gang with animals, cutting from them to kangaroos, dingos, kookabura, snakes, brids of prey and so forth, whilst the police burn the land in seeking their prey (although of course husbanding the land does involve controlled fires). Lest we miss the symbolism, Hare tells his men that the gang aren't animals and we get repeated shots of a caged lion.
Jordan had directed Ledger in Two Hands, a better film with a better performance. Ledger is tubby sideburns, Bloom eye candy, Rush apparently refusing to say more than a sentence at a time and looking grumpy. I gather it's not hugely accurate in terms of history, but there's nothing new there; it certainly didn't have the mythic qualities of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - but then it was at least half an hour shorter.
Totals: 14 [Cinema: 4; DVD: 9; TV: 1]
Tags: