True History of the Kelly Gang: Director Justin Kurzel on Russell Crowe, the Ned Kelly legend and cinematic distribution
A big, epic movie is in cinemas now and it probably wouldn't have happened at all if it wasn't for Russell Crowe.
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We wouldn’t even be here without Russell Crowe.
The Aussie-Kiwi actor was key to getting his new movie financed, True History of the Kelly Gang director Justin Kurzel revealed.
“Russell was a massive in giving the film a real foot hole in the marketplace,” Kurzel told news.com.au.
“I’ve got to say that Russell was unbelievably loyal to us. There were many where it looked like the film could fall down and he always stayed very loyal and true to the project. He was a real shining light for us in making the film.”
Kurzel said his film, based on Peter Carey’s novel, a fictionalised version of the Ned Kelly story, wasn’t the easiest kind of project to find money for. It took him two and a half years to put the financing together.
“We’re going through a massive change with cinemas at the moment, and how films are funded and distributed,” Kurzel said. “This film is a real ensemble piece, it’s pretty brutal in a way, and it’s got a particular bent to it.
“It doesn’t fit nicely within the pocket of easy films to find finance for. It was challenging because of its originality and because it was different.”
When it comes to Kurzel, you wouldn’t expect anything different to different.
The Adelaide filmmaker made waves for his feature debut, Snowtown, a visceral and merciless movie based on the infamous bodies in barrels murders that plagued the city for seven years in the 1990s.
His next film was the well-received adaptation of Macbeth, a Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard-starrer which featured stunning images of a stark and unforgiving landscape.
It’s those same striking visuals that underpin True History of the Kelly Gang with its strong aesthetic language of a ferocious Australian land in which the young Kelly was raised, filmed partly in Victoria’s Winton Wetlands.
“We filmed it in snow, in gale force winds, in sleet, in ankle deep mud and rain, and in some beautiful historic houses. It was intense but fantastic,” Essie Davis, who plays Kelly’s mother Ellen in the film, said.
“In Winton, the wetlands there have drowned all the trees and the landscape is extraordinarily desolate. It’s beautiful but it’s also unrelenting and brutal.”
The movie stars British actor George MacKay as the adult Kelly while Orlando Schwerdt plays the younger version.
MacKay has yet to establish a huge body of high-profile work, which is why someone like Crowe is so instrumental in getting a project greenlit.
That may change soon, however. On Thursday, Sam Mendes’ war epic, 1917, was released into cinemas, and the Oscar frontrunner is headlined by MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman as two young soldiers in World War I.
In True History of the Kelly Gang, MacKay plays a very different character to his 1917 role. Here he is an anachronistically punk Ned Kelly, a young man with resources and wits, but dealt a terrible hand by fate.
The film will be released on Stan on Australia Day, January 26, immediately available for Stan’s millions of streaming customers to watch at home as they please.
But true movie lovers will want to catch this film on the big screen, where it has a two-week release in independent cinemas around the country. The brutality of the landscape Davis spoke of translates visually onto the big screen with great beauty.
“I’m really hoping people will go and see it in a cinema, because it’s a cinematic experience,” Davis said. “But people have pretty big televisions in their homes nowadays.”
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The larger national chains – Village, Event and Hoyts – have refused to screen this highly accomplished Australian film because it will hit a streaming service within weeks, rather than the traditional three-month cinema-only window.
Australian director David Michod’s The King, co-produced by locals Joel Edgerton and Liz Watts (Watts is also a producer on Kelly Gang), were restricted by the same conditions because it was a Netflix movie, as were Netflix’s Marriage Story, The Irishman and The Two Popes, Amazon Prime releases The Report and Brittany Runs a Marathon, and the previous year's cinematic masterpiece Roma.
Kurzel said, when signing the distribution deal with Stan, that it was important to him that his film that his film got a cinematic release, no matter how truncated and limited.
“I made it at the beginning as a piece of cinema, and to allow the audience to watch it there if they wanted to.
“For me, I’m really fortunate that there are screens that will show it, and also doubly excited that there’s someone like Stan who’s exploring original Australian content. What I loved was their enthusiasm for the film, and how excited they were to put it on the platform.”
In terms of the big cinema chains refusing to show it, Kurzel acknowledged there were massive changes underfoot in the industry and that a middle ground between streamers and exhibitors will be found.
“I hope that that the two can coexist because they’re going to have to,” he said. “I think there’s value in both and it’s not as black and white as you either put it in cinema or you put it on a streamer.
“I appreciate the challenges within theatrical at the moment, on both sides, with people who own cinemas, that’s their livelihoods, but for filmmakers who are desperately trying to niche out screens at the moment, it’s challenging times.
“If you’ve got a film that’s unique or has a particular voice to it, you want it to be able to get it in cinemas, but you also want that to be supported as well. It’s very hard now to get independent films in cinemas and get distributors to trust bringing out independent or Australian films.”
Of the top 10 highest-grossing films in Australia last year, seven of those were big-event Disney releases, and all of them were either a remake, a sequel or part of an existing franchise.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was the top-grossing original film at spot 12, and that was in large part due to Quentin Tarantino’s brand, in other words, like a Marvel movie, a Tarantino movie is a known quantity for filmgoers overcome with choice.
Davis, who is also married to Kurzel, said audiences will find much to like in True History of the Kelly Gang because “it’s epic and unlike anything anyone’s going to expect”.
Like Carey’s book on which the film was based, True History of the Kelly Gang doesn’t purport to be a definitive, historically accurate version of the infamous outlaw’s life. Rather, it wants to grapple with ideas of the myth around the man, and why this figure has become an Australian icon in the ways we think about our national identity.
“There’s always been a celebration of bush rangers as these cool guys,” Davis said. “Even the teachers in primary school were like, ‘they were the highwaymen of mythical history’.
“People’s idea of who Ned Kelly was is filtered through their experience of whether he was a cop killer or good guy.
“But he’s also a stubby holder, a beer holder, a can opener, a tattoo, he’s on cars and labels of mixer drinks.”
Kurzel added: “Peter’s book was amazing and it really prodded and poked at the notion of mythology and legend and identity, which I think is a very contentious issue in Australia.
“Ned Kelly has been defined by many different groups of people and used in many different ways to the point that it’s really hard to distinguish the real man and the real story.
“I think the big question about him is why does a 25-year-old bush ranger suddenly becomes so defining for us, especially for white Australians as somehow wrapped up in their identity?
“It’s very hard for me to judge. Those times in the 1870s was very Badlands, the distance between good and bad wasn’t far apart. There were some pretty horrific things happening around that time and the most horrific was towards Indigenous Australians.”
Kurzel said he hopes the film will be a “provocation of what is true and what is not” for audiences, to get them thinking about how and why Kelly defines us Australians.
“If people want to make to make you into something, and want to elevate you to something, sometimes it’s very hard to run away from that. There’s this feeling in the film of Ned being cursed to be someone,” Kurzel said.
“And be careful, because even after you’re dead, stories can be written about you that actually creates something that’s much bigger than the life you lead.
“It’s not just about Ned Kelly. It’s about us as Australians and our own history and why we elevate these myths and legends to define who we are.”
True History of the Kelly Gang is in select cinemas now nationally and will be available to stream on Stan on January 26
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Originally published as True History of the Kelly Gang: Director Justin Kurzel on Russell Crowe, the Ned Kelly legend and cinematic distribution