The Legend Of Ben Hall

Synopsis: The true story of the infamous bushranger Ben Hall (Jack Martin) and his friends , John Gilbert (Jamie Coffa) and John Dunn (William Lee), Australia’s first officially-recognized outlaws.

With its colonial-era story, exacting period verisimilitude, picturesque widescreen photography of the Australian bush and lush score, Matthew Holmes’s film would have been feted had it been released 40 years ago when Australian cinema-goers were regularly treated to tales of our pioneering past.  As it is, it has stolen into town with minimal publicity and is showing on a few off-the-beaten-track screens. Which is a pity as if ever we could do with an antidote to our globalized mind-set and a reminder of our origins it is now.  Perhaps this was the intention behind this film but if so, clearly the plan is not going to come off.  As Ned Kelly allegedly said as he was about to meet his maker, “such is life”.

Such meta-level considerations aside, what of the film itself?  Writer-director Holmes who developed the film from a 2014 short, is clearly fascinated by bush-ranger lore opts to depict the last few years of of his subject’s life but what he is trying to say about Hall is not clear.  One might assume from the title that the film is an attempt to place Hall on the same level as Kelly in the national mythos (Kelly was only 11 years old when Hall was gunned down in 1865) but unlike Tony Richardson’s 1972 Ned Kelly there really is no pre-existing legend to extrapolate from and Davies does not create one. As in real-life, Hall appears to have no cause with which to justify his actions and why he drifted into a life of crime is not apparent.  Although, unlike his compadres, Gilbert and Dunn, he never committed murder, his crimes seem to be largely indiscriminate and despite the alleged aim of putting together enough money to go to America, pointless, and one can’t help but feel that the police were justified in stopping someone who was such a persistent public menace.  Not the stuff of legend in other words.  Indeed, at times one wonders if the title is meant ironically and the point is that the legend and the reality were two very different things.  Throughout the film Hall is presented as a taciturn fellow, embittered by failure and locked into a pattern of behaviour over which he had lost control, dragged even further into the outcast mire by his partners in crime, the psychotically callous "Happy Jack" Griffith and the dim-witted Dunn.

If this uncertainty comes across as a lack of clarity rather than ambiguity, a more serious handicap are the performances.  As much as the production looks fabulously convincing, when the characters speak it feels wrong, as if instead of rough-hewn mid 19th century convict stock we were watching a lot of 21st century university undergraduates playing bushrangers. This is most apparent with Martin (he was also a producer) who simply does not have the substance to carry off Hall’s tragic persona as envisaged by Davies' script (the relationship between Hall and his son, Henry, is prominent in this respect) but neither Coffa nor Lee seem of the right time and place.  The brilliantly realized Bonnie and Clyde-like execution of Hall shows how much better Davies is as a director than a writer.

Then there are small things that shouldn’t have been. Although all  the male cast are suitably begrimed, the women, even the whores, look like they’ve just stepped out of a make-up session and why was William Lee who is clearly in his mid-to-late 20s cast as an 18 year old? And as for the miraculous healing from gunshot wounds by the Hall gang, forget about it.  

Notwithstanding,The Legend of Ben Hall is a quality production, a considerable achievement as a debut feature, and certainly one that deserved better distribution and exhibition treatment than it has been given.  

Want more about this film?

Want something different?