About.
Company
New Zealand International Film Festival
Duration
124 minutes
Advisory
R16: Violence, sexual violence, offensive language & content that may disturb
Australia 2019
OPENING NIGHT
From Sir Sydney Nolan’s epic paintings to Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Ned Kelly has come a long way to find himself thundering on horseback across a barren moonlit landscape, dressed only in boots and a flowing lace frock, in this dazzling postmodern version of the outlaw legend.
Adapting Carey’s 2001 novel of the same name, director Justin Kurzel’s Ned Kelly (1917’s George McKay as an adult) lives out his short but audacious life writ-large in punk graffiti scrawled across a canvas far bigger and more surreal than any other film or cultural to depiction to date.
Ned spends the film failing to win the love of his mother Ellen (Essie Davis, more complex and luminous than ever), who at one point sells the child to her sometime-lover and bushranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe) – a gesture one wonders might be as much to deflect Ned’s burgeoning Oedipal gaze as it is to earn a pretty coin. Ned finds some intermittent consolation in the arms of young sex worker Rose (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie), a cynical soulmate of sorts, while we’re encouraged to deduce he also shares something deeper and more urgent than just fraternal bro-hood with his loyal friend and Kelly Gang member Joe Byrne (Sean Keenan). No putting this gang into any binary corner.
Kelly’s justified rage against the colonial constabulary, endowed with some disconcerting allure in Charlie Hunnam’s predatory Sgt O’Neil and the louche decadence of Nicolas Hoult’s Constable Fitzpatrick, fuels his rapid ascent to anti-heroic superstardom. This positions Ned as the more famous cousin of Clare, the vengeful protagonist of Jennifer Kent’s gut-wrenching The Nightingale (NZIFF19), while Kurzel adds here an Irish paean to the howl of rage which was Warwick Thornton’s unforgettable Sweet Country. — Marten Rabarts
Presented in association with Phantom Billstickers.
Credits
Justin Kurzel
Director
Hal Vogel, Liz Watts, Paul Ranford, Justin Kurzel
Producers
Shaun Grant. Based on the novel by Peter Carey
Screenplay
Ari Wegner
Photography
Nick Fenton
Editor
Karen Murphy
Production Designer
Alice Babidge
Costume Designer
Jed Kurzel
Music
With
George MacKay
Ned Kelly
Essie Davis
Ellen Kelly
Nicholas Hoult
Constable Fitzpatrick
Charlie Hunnam
Sgt O’Neil
Russell Crowe
Harry Power
Orlando Schwerdt
young Ned Kelly
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie
Mary Hearn
Sean Keenan
Joe Byrne
Earl Cave
Dan Kelly
Marlon Williams
George King
Louis Hewison
Steve Hart
Festival
Toronto 2019
Gallery.
Book
Tickets.
Tickets.
Adult $18.50
Student $15.50
Senior $12.50
Multi-Trip Pass $77.50
It’s myth-making, splattered in blood, scored with an electric guitar, and enacted with such brazen bigness that you wouldn’t be surprised if the cast assembled for a curtain call at the end.
Multi-Trip Pass
Book at least one ticket to five or more different films at the ASB Waterfront Theatre in one transaction, and get all your tickets for $15.50 each!
Multi-Trip Pass