A Kelly Movie based solely on the facts and the evidence....

My favourite Ned. 

Hard on the heels of the terrific bushranger movie, ‘The Legend of Ben Hall’, comes the announcement from the same Director of a crowdfunding campaign, beginning later this month to make another Bushranger movie. This was not unexpected as all throughout the campaign to fund produce and then promote ‘The Legend of Ben Hall’, Matthew Holmes constantly referred to it as being just the first of a series of films about Bushrangers. However what is unexpected, is that rather than making movies about John Vane and Frank Gardner, the ‘prequel’ movies he had repeatedly said he would produce next, he has instead decided to make a movie about Ned Kelly. Why he has changed his mind is not explained anywhere that I can find, but I suspect it has something to do with the two hard-core Kelly sympathisers who took Matthew on a tour of various Kelly related historical sites recently. They posted video-clips on Facebook that show them explaining to Matthew the significance of the various places and what happened there. He seemed quite impressed by it all, and is now proclaiming that this Ned Kelly movie will be unlike any other because it will be ‘free of prejudice or agenda, based solely on the facts and the evidence we have on hand. Not based on a novel or an opinion, not mingled with Hollywood fancy and nonsense”. He’s enlisted the help of these two Kelly sympathisers as screenwriters and at every opportunity is stressing that this movie will be as historically accurate as he can make it.

The idea of a movie about Ned Kelly that’s based ‘solely on the facts and the evidence we have on hand, not based on a novel or an opinion’ is a terrific one, and would be a movie I would certainly love to see.  Kelly sympathisers in their scores are applauding him and getting very excited at the prospect, and with good reason because Matthew Holmes first feature film on the Legend of Ben Hall has shown he certainly has the ability to do it.

So what would a Kelly movie that ignores ‘opinion’ and is based on facts and the evidence at hand look like? Well, if Holmes is going to continue with the same approach used in his first movie, he is going to make extensive use of the newspaper reports of the time, of Police records and Court reports, as well as contemporary writings, and isn’t going to rely on ‘opinion’ which is what 'folklore' and 'oral tradition' mostly is.  And just as he accepted guidance and advice from a modern day Hall historian, Peter Bradley, he should look to modern day Kelly historians for advice and guidance in the same way. Here I am not referring to the old guard who cooked up the modern Kelly myth, people like Jones and McMenomy, or the rank amateur co-screenwriter who grandly calls himself a Kelly historian, but people like Ian MacFarlane, Dr Russell Scott, Doug Morrissey, Stuart Dawson and Grantlee Kieza. These people are all serious academics and historians and cannot be ignored as they are part of the ‘evidence on hand’ They have added insights and knowledge to the Kelly story that wasn’t around 50 years ago when the modern Kelly myths were first developed.

To start with then Holmes will not be able to suggest the Kellys were persecuted and hounded by the Police and that Ned Kelly was a Police-made criminal. This idea was invented by Ned Kelly and proclaimed in the Jerilderie Letter, the tired refrain of criminals down the ages and an opinion repeated by Kelly sympatisers that its all the polices fault.  Its the most central of all the Kelly myths, the one that in the minds of Kelly sympathisers justifies everything that happened once Ned Kelly decided to rebel against it. However, as Ive shown on this Blog by careful review of the actual details recorded in the news and the court reports of the time, there is no support for that idea at all - its a myth.  The records show that the police took almost no interest in Neds’ immediate family until after Red had died, and later, when Ned was apparently ‘going straight’ the Police again took no interest in their lives; the records also show that the Kelly’s court appearances were for actual crimes and followed genuine complaints rather than the purported manufactured excuses to harass them; the Court records show that whenever Kellys appeared in Court they were treated according to the Law; charges were often dismissed or reduced, and sentences were remitted for good behaviour; the 1881 Royal Commission said there was no such persecution. The record also shows that in 1877 Nicholson ordered the Police NOT to upset or trouble the Kellys in any way, unless they committed a crime, even a paltry one. By then, Ned Kelly had been in Gaol for assault and indecency, had avoided a conviction for assaulting a Chinaman on the dubious testimony of associates, and served three years for horse theft. Doug Morrissey revealed why that conviction was fair, for its time, and not a travesty as always asserted by Kelly supporters.  Many other members of the extended Kelly and Quinn dynasties and various members of the Greta mob had also been before the Courts and served time in jail – by 1877 the Police were running out of patience. These are the facts supported by the documentary evidence of police and court records and newspaper reports from the time. The idea that the Kellys were persecuted and unfairly victimised by Police is a claim made by Ned Kelly, an opinion unsupported by evidence, and nothing else. It shouldn't be in any movie based 'solely on the facts and the evidence'.

When it comes to the so-called Fitzpatrick incident, Holmes will be obliged to portray Ned Kelly as having been there, because that’s what the evidence shows. The only ‘evidence’ that he wasn’t there are Neds own words, which even Ian Jones regards as lies. Holmes will have to take into consideration Ian MacFarlane and Stuart Dawsons writings about Fitzpatrick, who has been forever maligned on the basis of the unsubstantiated claims of a fellow Policeman. The documentary evidence regarding Fitzpatrick in 1880  is a petition,  signed  by more than 100 people including JPs and an MP, wherein he is described among other things as “zealous diligent obliging and universally liked”. So is Holmes going to prefer an unsubstantiated allegation that has been used to blacken the name of Fitzpatrick from 1878 till now, or an actual contemporary document?  Kelly sympathisers love to express great moral outrage at the way Fitzpatrick conducted his private affairs as a young man, but they were nothing out of the ordinary - Ben Hall had numerous girlfriends and affairs but he is not condemned for it! So, it is generally accepted did Joe Byrne, and Aaron Sherrit, and when have any of the Kelly sympathisers applied the same moral judgement to Mrs Kelly who also had lovers and illegitimate children? But if Fitzpatrick subsequently behaved badly, could that not be a consequence of the appalling manner in which he was publicly humiliated by the Police force who made a scapegoat of him and dismissed him on the uncorroborated word of a  senior colleague? The Royal Commission however did NOT condemn Fitzpatricks actions at Greta, though without asking for any corroboration it mistakenly accepted the later criticisms of him. 

And what is Matthew Holmes going to make of Stringybark Creek? Is he going to recycle the unsubstantiated myths about ‘body straps’, the wrong imputation that being in plain clothes meant the police were in disguise, the oft repeated nonsense about the police being ‘armed to the teeth’? None of these familiar lines from the Kelly mythology is supported by any actual evidence, but are merely the kind of “opinions” that Holmes said will not be informing the movie – he wants facts, so those furphies will be excluded! Is he going to accept Kellys claim that he killed Lonigan in self-defence with a single shot when he lifted his head up from behind a log - or the evidence from the autopsy? This showed that Lonigan had not one but four wounds, all inflicted while he was alive and several were in places that couldn’t possibly have been hit if Lonigan was behind a log. That evidence, and McIntyres testimony show that Lonigan was shot almost immediately after he was ordered to bail up, when he hesitated to do exactly what Kelly demanded. The evidence and the facts here show Kelly lied. Is he going to portray Kennedy's murder as a mercy killing, as Ned Kelly  sanctimoniously pretended it to be, or as the sinister hunting down of a man fleeing for his life, only to be killed once his revolver was spent? The word of a  proven liar is the only evidence to support the former scenario over the actual  forensic evidence and the details from the crime scene, a long way away from the Camp where the original attack took place.

Then there is Glenrowan, the place where Holmes co-screenwriter Steve Jager claims Ned Kelly planned to start a civil war as a prelude to declaring north-east Victoria a Republic. There is simply not one piece of documentary evidence to support this idea, and the evidence we DO have about why Ned Kelly embarked on this ‘madness’ as Ian Jones called it, is that he was acting out his hatred of police and possibly also hoping somehow to free his mother from prison, even though by mid 1880 she had only a few more months left on her sentence. Is he going to portray the gathering of prisoners in the Ann Jones Inn as a hilarious bit of fun or as a terrifying experience for many of them and a demonstration of Kelly’s utter disregard for the lives of innocent men women and children? They were all deliberately placed in harm’s way and kept there even when it was evident to everyone once the  ghastly horror of a train smash had been averted that the plan had failed and the only possible outcomes for the gang were either capture or death. Who is Holmes going to portray as being ultimately responsible for the loss of innocent life there? And is Holmes commitment to telling the truth sufficiently robust to allow him to expose Kellys plan for Glenrowan as being a mass killing that would have had a toll of innocent lives similar to the Port Arthur massacre? Is that not a fact? Is Holmes going to allow the question to be asked of Ned Kelly "Why wasn't killing three Police enough?"

My guess is that Holmes will succeed in making an entertaining and exciting movie – it would need an appallingly bad Director to make a movie about the life of Ned Kelly that wasn’t! However, unlike his great first movie, The Legend of Ben Hall, I very much doubt his version of the Life of Ned Kelly will be ‘free of prejudice or agenda, based on facts and the evidence on hand, not based on a novel or opinion’. In fact I am almost certain he will pass up this golden opportunity to do something really radical with the Kelly legend and tell the truth about it at last, but instead serve up yet another recycling of the tedious Kelly mythology that modern Australia is actually moving on from. And this is why:

Firstly he has written on Facebook that there is “no feature film to date that has explored the Kelly story completely and accurately, with the exception of Ian Jones' 'The Last Outlaw'. The Last Outlaw, the 1980 TV miniseries was widely acclaimed and is still popular amongst Kelly sympathisers, but it is laden with unhistorical Kelly myths and legends, and portrays Ned as the hard-done by innocent selector, demonises the Police and Fitzpatrick, promotes the Republic myth and leaves out much that’s unpalatable. If Holmes watched it critically, he should have known this, so one is left to wonder how much Holmes really knows and understands about the Kelly story.  

Secondly, Holmes has enlisted as co-screenwriters two well known dedicated Kelly symapthisers. One calls himself a Kelly historian and researcher but he is misusing the word historian. He is a person who has openly expressed contempt and disrespect for science and scientists, and for actual research by actual historians , and on the Kelly country Facebook video posts makes a number of elementary blunders, and exposes his commitment to the pure form of the Kelly myth. Ask these Kelly sympathisers what their opinions are  of real Kelly historians and researchers  like McDermott, MacFarlane, Morrissey, Dawson and even myself – whenever Jager mentioned these people on the Ned Kelly Forum it was only to dismiss and ridicule them. Ask Jager what he thinks of the work of scientists : Jager rudely dismissed the work of the scientists who identified Ned Kellys bones, claiming on the Ned Kelly Forum (which he eventually destroyed) that the majority of the research findings claimed by the scientists  ‘were taken from Kelly researchers” and “as it was required by law that the remains were to be identified at the VIFM, it hardly makes any of the contributors to the book "experts", when in all fact they are just doing their job and trying to profit from Ned's story.”  From the Videos he posted on Facebook recently its clear Jager also doesn’t accept the findings of the scientists at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) who showed that a piece of metal on display at the Kelly Vault is not the offcut from Joe Byrnes armour that its finder claims –  Jager repeated the false claim that it is. On another of those videoes he  described Glenrowan as the place where Ned Kelly planned to start a civil war, an uprising to establish the Republic of North East Victoria, the centrepiece of Kelly mythology and a completely unhistorical fantasy. He proclaimed on the Ned Kelly Forum that a piece of Kellys armour seen in a photo taken in the 50’s had disappeared and he was on a mission to find it – in fact nothing was missing. Jagers claimed ‘back lappet’ was actually just the shoulder piece hanging in the wrong place. He hadn’t noticed it was missing from the shoulder in the photo! He has also publicly claimed to know “without a doubt” where Ned Kellys skull is. The reality is Jager is not a historian, and he has publicly expressed an attitude of  disrespect for real scholarship and for scientists, and appears to have no understanding of the way science works, appears to have no idea of the necessity for a real historian and researcher to be objective, and he wont hesitate to dismiss Police and Court reports as cover-ups and newspaper  stories as corrupt, or the opinion of actual experts when they contradict his preconceived Kelly stories. This behaviour might be understandable from an ignorant Kelly sympathiser but from a person who claims to be a Kelly historian and researcher? If Holmes works with someone like Jager, to keep him happy he  will either have to significantly compromise on his commitment to accuracy and being true to the historical record, or else get rid of the sympathisers. Bringing them on board as co-screenwriters may well be a decision he comes to regret.

Thirdly, Holmes has fallen for the ‘false dichotomy’ argument used by climate-change deniers, creationists and the Kelly writers alike. This is a tactic that’s designed to attract support to their cause by making their weak and unsupportable arguments appear more credible than they really are, by placing them alongside the scientific case and claiming they are equivalent. Then, as Holmes wrote in a response on the True Story Facebook page ‘let the audience decide what they think of Ned Kelly once all is laid out on the table’. In the creationist and climate change debates bad science, discredited argument and false facts are presented as having equivalent weight to the overwhelming consensus of scientific evidence – a false dichotomy that an ordinary non-scientist often doesn’t recognise. What this does is create an impression that in the end the argument is so finely balanced that either opinion can be supported. Kelly writers have been doing this for decades, and it appears Holmes has fallen for it. In fact the arguments based on facts and the evidence are overwhelmingly unsupportive of the Kelly myths. The curious reality in the Kelly world is the dogged refusal of sympathisers to accept the arguments based on facts and evidence. Maybe Holmes movie will help them to see the truth.

Its interesting that Holmes claims that in the Legend of Ben Hall he put out the facts and let the viewers decide. He declared that his goal  in the Kelly  movie “as a storyteller is to HUMANISE everyone within the story, to look at it from every perspective and to help the audience understand WHY this story happened, not to force the audience into a pre-determined conclusion.”  (His caps). This is a commendable goal but these comments suggest to me that Holmes believes he can remove himself and his own subjectivity from the process and produce a movie that’s effectively untouched by human hands. Either that or he is pretending that he can, as part of a tactic designed to make what he eventually produces seem more credible.  I don’t believe a story can EVER be told from “every perspective” , or that a movie can be insulated against the makers own persepctives and opinions and prejudices. In fact despite these expressions of intent, in The Legend of Ben Hall Holmes didn’t just present the facts  for the viewer to weigh up, or present ‘every perspective’ on the story. He didn’t present two types of Ben Hall but he made the case for the sort of conflicted person he considered Ben Hall to be, and portrayed him in that way, and I think he did it brilliantly.  What the viewer had to decide was how credible was Holmes portrayal. This is what he should aim to do in the Kelly movie as well, and not kid himself that he is going to produce a movie that just presents the facts, that tells the story from every perspective so the audience can make up its own mind. What he WILL do for certain, no matter what he says or even thinks he is doing as he did with Ben Hall, is make a movie from a certain perspective, and the audience will make its mind up on how well he does it.

When it comes to telling the story of Ned Kelly however, Holmes has taken on a much more complex task, because the true story of Ned Kelly is buried under an almost impenetrable layer of legends and stories and oral history and myth that has almost completely hidden the person at the centre of it all. If Jager and Phelan have their way, the truth about  Ned Kelly will not come out. I’m expecting a rehash of the unhistorical Kelly myths that glorify a police murderer and liar, not a Kelly story that has credibility other than as entertainment, and damage to Holmes good reputation as someone committed to writing true history.

This is my challenge to you Matthew Holmes : dump the tired old Kelly mythology, dump the Kelly fanciers who are trying to pull the wool over your eyes, dump the idea that The Last Outlaw was in any way accurate and historical, read MacFarlanes book and Morrisseys book and Dawsons writing and Grantlee Kiezas book and have the courage of your instinct to produce the true story, the definitive story genuinely based on facts and evidence. It will still be an absorbing and exciting movie, and you're the person with the genius to make it.

The Legend of Ben Hall : Movie Review

In 2014 a movie maker who didn’t go to Film School launched an ambitious crowd funding bid to raise $75,000 to make a short film that would be ‘…. a highly-realistic, cinematic and gritty 40-minute narrative depicting Ben Hall in the final days of his life, culminating in his controversial death outside Forbes NSW in 1865. We want this film to be ready for the 150th anniversary of Ben Hall's death, which is next year - May 5th 2015.

We want to resurrect this story from history books and explode it onto the screen in a glorious, sweeping way for a whole new generation to discover - in High Definition and surround sound. Australia has been waiting decades for a Ben Hall film; the time has come to deliver one.

Too often, film adaptations stray from the real history. Not our film. Nobody will have ever depicted the Ben Hall story in the level of detail and historical accuracy as we plan to do. From the weapons and costumes, to the characters and dialogue - this level of authenticity is rarely seen.

Beyond pure entertainment, The Legend of Ben Hall will also be used to raise Australia's awareness of our colonial history and promote tourism in central NSW. We will also enter the film into dozens of prestigious film festivals with hope of snatching up some coveted awards! We even hope to get The Legend of Ben Hall on television!

In fact, they raised nearly double their target, and managed to turn what seemed like impossibly high aspirations even for a 40 minute short film into a full length feature, on a budget which was never-the-less minuscule. It was finally released a bit later than they hoped for late last year, has been shown in a very limited number of cinemas, but now is available on DVD and BluRay.

I knew of its existence and would have seen it if it was ever screened locally, but it wasn’t. Then, quite recently it was announced that the same director, Matthew Holmes, was planning another bushranger movie, this time about Ned Kelly, and again he plans to crowd-fund it . I was challenged by Mark Perry to watch "The Legend of Ben Hall" before I jumped to any conclusions about the planned “Legend of Ned Kelly” and so, when time finally permitted, I found a copy at the nearby JB Hi Fi and watched it the other night.

The movie is not about the whole of Ben Halls life but about the last couple of years of his life on the run, and ends with his death in 1865. There is therefore much of his life and earlier bushranging career that is not depicted, though at various points in the movie hints are given as to what went before and why. On-screen text says that by 1864 he was the most wanted man in the British Empire, and the Reward for his capture was the largest yet offered. The storyline is about Halls attempt to save himself by abandoning a life of crime and  fleeing the country, a decision which leaves him awfully conflicted and in a  desperate quandary : to leave he will need funds which he can only get by continuing the life of a Bushranger; to leave he will need to continue his association with the unstable and violent criminal John Gilbert, and reluctantly draw others into another Gang; to leave he will have to abandon the things that mean the most to him, his first but now estranged love Biddy, and his young son William. The filmmaker weaves together Halls doomed attempts to establish a relationship with his son, his fight to control his companions and acquire the necessary funds by highway robbery, and his struggle to evade capture long enough to escape to Queensland into an absolutely spellbinding movie that would be brilliant on any budget, but is even more so, because by comparison with most movies it was produced on the smell of an oily rag and with a cast of virtual unknowns. It helps of course to have the amazing backdrop of the Australian bush to set your movie in, and there are breathtaking shots of the gang riding in silhouette along the ridges against the setting sun, through crackling eucalypt forest echoing with the call of whip-birds and kookaburra, and across dry grass plains studded with rocky outcrops and ancient craggy gums – but it requires a kind of genius to capture it all so exquisitely on film. I wondered now and again if there weren’t one too many of these gorgeous scenes of men on horseback galloping across a landscape that resembled a Tom Roberts oil painting, but certainly in Australia, people who love horses and have been in the bush can probably never get enough of that kind of beauty. But the movie is not just a grand visual feast, like a promo for Outback NSW. There is a terrific tension built up between police and the hunted, between the hunted and their increasingly wary supporters, and between the members of the gang itself; there is passion and emotion that’s not overdone and sugary, there’s frivolity, dancing and music, betrayal, tragedy, horror, bravery, and through it all the brooding Ben Hall whose internal turmoil is barely contained. The scenes shot inside houses, police stations pubs and stores are all equally as rich and convincing. The opening sequence, where the face of the movies Ben Hall emerges from the famous photo of the real Ben Hall is mesmerising. Ben leaving his son and estranged wife for the final time is gut wrenching. Seeing panic-stricken John Dunn shoot  a policeman and father of eight is shocking. John Glberts behaviour is often sickening. What Matthew Holmes has achieved with his unknown cast and the talent he has at his disposal is really remarkable.

This is a terrific movie that succeeds on so many levels as entertainment, and deserves country-wide distribution – I cant imagine any true-blue Aussie not giving it five stars.

But does it succeed as history? 

The movie makers  set themselves almost impossibly high hopes for this film : “Too often, film adaptations stray from the real history. Not our film. Nobody will have ever depicted the Ben Hall story in the level of detail and historical accuracy as we plan to do. From the weapons and costumes, to the characters and dialogue - this level of authenticity is rarely seen.”

Now, I almost never buy DVDs or watch movies anywhere other than in the Cinema on the Big Screen, but I was forced to watch this at home on the DVD I bought from JB HiFi. The benefit of doing this - something I didn’t realise until I put the movie on - was that in addition to the movie you get some Extras: three Trailers, A Directors commentary and a Historians commentary, this last one provided by Peter Bradley, an actual historian who is also a descendant of Ben Halls brother. On the DVD therefore you can then watch the entire movie again, with the sound track and dialogue muted but a voice over by Bradley and Matthew Holmes. I found t fascinating to listen to these two gentlemen discuss the various scenes as they unfolded and describe the relationship between the scene and various elements within it to what was actually known from history. I learned that virtually everything depicted was something that actually happened, but things were sometimes rearranged to better suit the narrative, or left out or embellished in a way that was sympathetic to the true history but which enhanced the story telling and the cinematic experience. Some things were changed because of funding or scheduling constraints, but essentially the story as told though not entirely accurate in every detail, was true to the historical facts where it was important. Thus, its not really known if Ben Hall actually abducted his son, but William did indeed  end up briefly in the care of others, its not actually known why Ben and Biddys relationship broke down, Ben Hall didn’t ever give money to Biddy for Williams care, and Goobang Mick had two children not one as portrayed in the film. We are also told that a popular belief that the Aborigine Dargan was once a childhood friend of Ben’s, was the person who killed him and that the Police then used Bens corpse for firing practice is a popular myth with no historical evidence to support it.  Another Myth they dismissed was that Biddys new partner was a former policeman.  The boy named Supple who gave Police information about the gang being in a hayshed was actually chased outside before he was caught, but Holmes said when that scene was supposed to be filmed it was raining so they decided to depict his detention as having occurred in the Pub. I was most interested to hear Holmes talk about the Police replacing shot in their shotguns with revolver balls! Holmes and Bradley constantly referred to newspapers from the time and Police and court records as being the documents on which they relied to ensure their recreations were accurate.

Thus, in my opinion they also succeeded in their ambition to make the movie as close as they could to the historical truth. They’ve carefully avoided repeating non-historical myths and oral traditions that are not supported by the evidence, and they’ve avoided the temptation to either demonise or venerate Ben Hall, a man whom the record seems to suggest and who is portrayed in the movie as a complex and deeply conflicted individual. However, Holmes acknowledges that because he didn’t actually kill anyone himself Hall may have been accorded more credit than he deserved, and so he has Dunn pose the question that Ben Halls story leaves everyone asking : “Do you think you’re innocent in all this, that you aint got no blood on your hands?” And Gilbert says “You’ve taken shots at hundreds of them, you could have killed any one of them at any time”

Matthew Holmes spent many years thinking about and preparing to make 

this film, and it has paid off because I think he has created a masterpiece, 

and it richly deserves the Awards it  has recently received. 

5 stars with strawberries on top!