Ned Kelly

I’m not sure when seeing Heath Ledger on screen will stop being moving. His role here is particularly poignant in retrospect: Ned Kelly died when he was about 25, only a few years younger than Ledger. This film is directed by Gregor Jordan, the man who made the very strange Buffalo Soldiers - so don’t expect a ‘straight’ version of the story. There are lingering shots of the Australian landscape and wildlife, along with a dreamy narration by Ledger. Indeed, the film is based on the book ‘Our Sunshine’, which purports to give us the internal monologue of the man. The problem is, there are certain facts about Kelly which can’t be ignored, and which this director seems to play down. If we were to take this film as truth, Kelly was an innocent man, abused and persecuted by the police until he was eventually forced in to becoming an outlaw, reluctant to hurt, kill or rob anyone. A quick Google will tell you this was not true at all. There is so much information about his life, in fact, that Jordan seems to have taken the position of giving us an impression only of the character of Kelly. It certainly does that, although the inclusion of a love interest (played by Naomi Watts), should have been avoided. Ledger, at times, seems too soft for the type of man Kelly was. As with all films based on real life, it is hard for the director to detract from the interest of the story to impress upon us how he’s told the story. I expect if you already know the history of Ned Kelly there are few surprises or points of interest in this film. The accents are variable, especially from Orlando Bloom, and of course the story is told with a modern, humanistic perspective (when the man himself was probably far from it). The ending is something of an anti-climax – there is no great vindication or real showdown, no great speeches. Kelly just seems to give up, and the resignation of his last line is thought-provoking in its way, but deflating. It feels like Jordan was compromised between his attempt to film an impressionistic movie and a historical one. The result is consequently ambiguous.