australia

Portrait Of The Outlaw As A Young Man: ‘True History Of The Kelly Gang’

By Ella Taylor

If you’ve read Peter Carey’s marvelous 2001 True History of the Kelly Gang, you’ll be aware going into a faithful new film adaptation of the novel that the word “true” is a signal to literary mischief and sly tampering with received history. Director Justin Kurzel and writer Shaun Grant mirror Carey’s grimly playful take on the myths that have grown around Ned Kelly, leader of the notorious Australian Kelly Gang.

In his second feature after the chilling 2012 horror movie Snowtown, Kurzel adds a ravishingly brutal visual grammar that pictures the country’s state of Victoria as a late 19th century Wild West with no clear boundaries between those who break the law and the British colonizers meant to enforce it. Not that there’s much law to start with. A former theatrical designer, Kurzel wrings a ravaged beauty from a rural landscape so blighted, its trees stick straight up in the air, leafless and barren. The soundtrack, by turns eerie and jangling, draws on the frantically nihilist punk canon of the 1970s, exactly a century after the Kelly Gang’s rise and fall. In a recurring, misleadingly romantic long shot we see Ned riding a white horse through the countryside.

Depending on your tolerance for savage mayhem, Ned Kelly — famous down under and overseas for the crude metal bucket he wore to butt heads with the Brits — was either a folk hero with Robin Hood tendencies or a murderous thug who spent his short, sharp life stealing horses, robbing banks, and whacking the constabulary who got in his way as reigning overlord of the Sons of Sieve, a ragtag band of Irish-born or bred resistance fighters whose odd signature was the frilly dresses they wore to battle the oppressor.

Hero or villain, that duality has pretty much come to be a staple of any knowing 21st-century revision of the Western hero, and certainly in anyone as drawn to subversive subtext as Carey. Faithful to the writer’s sly vision, Kurzel pries loose the man from both myths and digs deeper to give Kelly an origin story in three parts, told by Ned himself in a letter he writes from prison to the baby daughter he will never see grow up. Woven into Ned’s earnest missive, an alternate tale unfolds as a black tragicomedy studded with the pathos of a frightened and confused boy forced into manhood far too early, with myth and reality all jumbled up in his addled head.

Carey’s Ned, expanded by Kurzel, is something of a screw-up as both saint and sinner. There’s something biddable about Ned that makes him both easy to love and fatally vulnerable to baleful influence. Which may be why Kurzel cast George MacKay as his lead and not the more dashing Nicholas Hoult, who plays a cruel and callow local policeman who preys on Ned’s mother. MacKay showed himself a versatile performer in Pride and 1917, but there’s an irreducibly sweet goofiness that serves him beautifully as Ned, an innocent warped into avenging angel by early trauma, destitution, and the brutal injuries of the colonial rule he was born into.

Played as a child by a seraphic Orlando Schwerdt, Ned is shaped early on by the loss of his father and the twisted devotion of his mother, played by the terrific Australian actress Essie Davis, recently seen as a harried single mother in The Babadook and as the sexy lay detective in television’s Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Davis’s Ellen Kelly may be the most bracing portrait of maternal devotion gone bananas on the screen today. A proud, wild-haired warrior, Ellen Kelly will do anything, including selling her body and her favorite son, to protect the little that’s hers. Even the religiosity that sustains her has gotten tangled in her head, and, inevitably, her credulous son’s.

A hyper-responsible little man of the house, Ned adores his mother back, and their mad kinship will remain the movie’s fulcrum, molding the eager-to-please lad into an adult who’s equal parts creative writer and bitter avenger. In the latter he’s helped along by bush ranger Harry Power (Russell Crowe, vast in size and billowing rhetoric), whose sexual impotence feeds straight into a horrifying sadism that lands his young charge in prison. Years later Ned emerges a man of sorts but divided against himself, his most creative impulses twisted by circumstance into violence and a tendency to bend with every wind. Ned has been shown enough affection to enable him to fall in love and father a child with a sweet young prostitute (Thomasin Mackenzie). But his encounters with a viciously exploitive British constable, played wittily against type by Charlie Hunnam, will be the making of Ned, and also his undoing.

And so Ned’s story comes to an end, his account always refracted for us by the film’s visceral interpretation. True History of the Kelly Gang ends with a set piece that both tops and undercuts every bravura climactic gunfight you may have seen. The spectacle, at once brutal and absurd (here comes that metal bucket), affirms and demolishes Ned’s messenger-of-God fantasies and those of the Western too. Behind his dangling body we hear echoes of an earlier comment by a buddy with a clearer head. “None of this is the work of God,” he whispers to Ned. “You’re just a man.”

CorrectionApril 24, 2019

An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that George MacKay had appeared in Game of Thrones.

While Corals Die Along The Great Barrier Reef, Humans Struggle To Adjust

by Rob Schmitz

Aerial view of the Heart Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef

Arterra/UIG via Getty Images

Nearly a hundred miles off the shore of Port Douglas, Australia, tourists jump into the water of the outer reef. On their dive, they see giant clams, sea turtles and a rainbow of tropical fish, all swimming above brightly colored coral.

On a boat, marine biologist Lorna Howlett quizzes the tourists in the sunshine. “How many people out there saw a coral highlighter-yellow?” she asks, eliciting a show of hands. “What about highlighter-blue? Yeah? Anyone see some hot pinks?”

Many think of vibrantly colored coral as an example of natural beauty. But in fact, these are early signs that the coral is dying. Healthy coral is usually earth-tone.

Kyle Taylor/Flickr

Eager hands shoot up among the few dozen tourists lounging on the deck of the boat in their wetsuits. Everyone’s still smiling from their Technicolor tour of the Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage site that encompasses the world’s biggest coral reef system and is home to some 400 different types of coral.

Then Howlett breaks the news: “Those are not natural coral colors,” she tells them, prompting quizzical looks. “That is actually coral that is stressed, OK. So it’s got a sniffly nose, got a bit of a sore throat.”

It turns out a reef filled with neon coral is not normal. Healthy coral is usually earth-toned. The bright pinks, blues and yellows these tourists saw in their dive along the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef are the first signs that coral is dying.

And then, says marine biologist John Edmondson, “You see it going white.”

Scuba-diving tourists are helped into the water by a boat crew member on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

William West/AFP/Getty Images

That’s the second sign of dying coral, says Edmondson, who runs Wavelength Reef Cruises, a tour operator on the reef.

“That’s when it’s most dramatic looking,” he says, pointing to a bleached brain coralthat is hundreds of years old. “But you don’t know if it’s going to die or it’s going to recover. … And when you start to see the coral actually dying, getting covered with algae and looking horrible, that is when it really hits home.”

In the past 18 months, Edmondson has watched as two-thirds of the coral along this 400-mile northern stretch of the Great Barrier Reef has turned white and died. Rising ocean temperatures have caused the single greatest loss of coral ever recorded along the reef.

John Edmondson runs Wavelength Reef Cruises in Port Douglas, Australia. Trained as a marine biologist, Edmondson makes a point of explaining the science behind climate change and coral bleaching to his customers.

Rob Schmitz/NPR

The die-off is devastating for the thousands of species that depend on the reef, including those responsible for its decline — humans, who depend on it for $6 billion in tourism revenue annually.

Those who work on the reef never thought things would get so bad so fast.

“I did not expect to see a loss of corals to this extent in my lifetime. This has come sooner than we had hoped,” says Terry Hughes, director of the Coral Reef Center at James Cook University in Townsville, along the midsection of the reef.

The world’s oceans have absorbed some of the heat from the global rise in greenhouse gas emissions, and in many cases, their waters are now warmer than at any time in recorded history. Corals are sensitive to temperature swings. Much like a human body, a rise of a few degrees can lead to illness, and eventually, death. The average ocean temperature has risen by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit. UNESCO expressed “serious concern” about the reef’s health last week — though it left the reef off its endangered list.

Top, bleached coral along the Great Barrier Reef. More than two-thirds of all the coral along the northernmost 400 miles of the reef bleached and died in the past 18 months. A sea turtle rests along the Great Barrier Reef, lower left, and a giant clam is seen along the outer reef, lower right.

Chelsea Malayny/NPR

“The new normal”

For the past two years, Hughes has led a team of scientists in both aerial and underwater surveys of the reef. It took a while — the Great Barrier Reef is made up of more than 3,000 individual reefs stretching as long as the entire West Coast of the United States. Their findings, published in March in the journal Nature, estimate that a third of the coral died along the entire Great Barrier Reef between March and November 2016, due to warmer-than-average water temperatures.

“Close to half of the corals on the Great Barrier Reef have died in a period of about 18 months,” Hughes says. “This is the new normal.”

Hughes is calling on everyone who studies and protects the world’s coral reefs to adjust to this new normal. He says coral reef management has always focused on restoring reefs to their pristine condition — before the oceans began to warm.

“And we argue that’s no longer possible,” says Hughes. “What we should be aiming for is keeping the reefs functional, recognizing that the world is on a conveyor belt. We are going to a new type of coral reef ecosystem, but if we’re careful how we do that, we will have a functioning ecosystem that will provide benefits to people.”

He doesn’t have any specific answers as to how to make that happen, but he’s calling on reef managers around the world to come up with plans.

Jon Brodie is a research fellow at James Cook University’s Coral Reef Center. He used to direct water quality for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Brodie believes it’s too late to save the coral along the reef.

Rob Schmitz/NPR

Not everyone at the Coral Reef Center shares Hughes’ optimism. Research fellow Jon Brodie used to direct water quality for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. He believes it’s too late to save the coral. Water temperatures are rising too fast, he says, and he predicts that in 30 years, most of it will be gone.

The 70-year-old has given his life to the reef. For him, the new normal is hard to accept.

“I have lots of young or youngish Ph.D. students and the like, and it wasn’t too many years ago when I could inspire them that this was a great area to work in and make a difference,” he says. “I find that more difficult now; much more difficult now.”

In many areas, oceans are warmer than at any time in recorded history. Coral is sensitive to temperature swings. Like a human body, a rise of a few degrees can lead to illness, and eventually, death.

Chelsea Malayny/NPR

A multibillion-dollar business

But along the waterfront in Cairns, where kids splash in a pool and diving boats sound their horns, his concerns seem far away. The city is the main hub of tourism along the Great Barrier Reef, a $6 billion industry employing 60,000 people. Many tour operators here take issue with the surveys scientists like Hughes have conducted of the reef’s health.

Col McKenzie directs the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators in Cairns. He says he’s bracing for a financial hit.

Rob Schmitz/NPR

“When they try to paint holistic pictures from sampling, you don’t get the real story,” says Col McKenzie, who directs the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators in Cairns.

McKenzie questions how accurate these scientific surveys have been, and he thinks the media has influenced people to think the reef has become the Great Barrier Graveyard.

“If we’re taking tourists out of Cairns to reefs that are destroyed, our business wouldn’t survive for more than a month,” says McKenzie, laughing. “We just wouldn’t be able to keep doing it. Yet you go and talk to people coming off these boats, they’ve had a fantastic time. They’ve seen what they came here to see!”

McKenzie maintains that there’s still a lot of healthy habitat to see, and there will be for years to come. But he does worry about the amount of coral that has died and what it’s going to do to the region’s bottom line.

“My guess is we’ve seen the end of double-digit growth,” he says, furrowing his brow. “We’re probably going to go back to 2 to 3 percent growth instead of 20 to 30 [percent]. The big issue is we got a lot of money being spent on additional infrastructure here in Cairns: new pontoons, new boats, new hotels going up.”

And that’s why McKenzie thinks rash measures should be taken to save the reef. He proposes installing enormous turbines in the deep ocean surrounding the reef. “If you could imagine a massive big ceiling fan, like a turbine pushing cool water to the surface,” he says.

A bleached coral like this one – hundreds of years old – is becoming a more common sight along the Great Barrier Reef, where scientists say an average of a third of all coral died last year alone.

Chelsea Malayny/NPR

In an email, Terry Hughes called McKenzie’s proposal one of the most “hare-brained” ideas he’s ever heard. He says tackling climate change would be easier.

Caught between the scientists and tour operators are the tourists themselves. Seventy percent of them come from outside Australia, like Alan Crabtree from Bellingham, Wash.

“One of the reasons we came now is because we wanted to see the barrier reef before it disappeared,” says Crabtree. “We wanted to take advantage of that.”

At the end of a day of snorkeling, the tourist boat pulls into Port Douglas, where thousands of colorful lorikeets fly between palm trees as the sun sets behind them. Wavelength Reef Cruises’ owner John Edmondson sits on his boat, talking about how the tourism industry is having a hard time dealing with the reef’s loss of coral.

Some operators don’t mention it to tourists for fear of spoiling a fun day out, but he’s chosen to educate his customers about what’s going on and what they can do to prevent climate change.

“If you’ve got a fantastic product, but there’s a negative aspect of it, how do you deal with that negative aspect?” Edmondson asks. “It’s best, I think, to explain it because most people are understanding.”

After all, says Edmondson, this isn’t Disneyland. It’s the world. Our world.