KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, Martin Scorsese’s latest film tackling the brutal 1920s murders of members of the Osage Native American tribe, released last week.
In reviewing a Scorsese flick, a director whose name is inextricable from cinema history (27 films since the early 70s, some of which agreed upon as bests-of-all-time), it’s hard to parse out my feelings for the director from my feelings for the film. Because how can I not be excited to see this man, so passionate about the industry (and about its preservation), continue to create at the level he does? Especially as he contends with his own mortality, the panic he feels around all he has left to create?
Flower Moon
Killers of the Flower Moon is a challenging film. It adapts David Grann’s best-selling book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, which tells this story through the perspective of Tom White (Jesse Plemons), the first FBI investigator sent to investigate the murders. But Scorsese (after conversations with DiCaprio and members of the Osage, with whom he worked extremely closely), shifted the heart of the story to the tribe and the vultures surrounding them. Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), heiress to an Osage fortune, is courted by Ernst Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), and manipulated by William Hale (Robert DeNiro).
House of Cards
Scorsese has always tackled stories of American evil, of greed and gluttony, but he does so differently here than I’ve seen across the rest of his filmography. What makes his stories so sickeningly entertaining is that as an audience, we collectively buy in. He’s a master of making us envy and glorify what we may intellectually recognize as bad. The first acts of Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street, Casino, The Departed, The Color of Money, The Irishman – they all build up a towering house of cards that we can’t help but be awed by. He’s maybe the master of portraying the American iconography of excess (and has invariably shaped it).
And then the house of cards collapses; that’s Marty’s greatest magic trick. Because the last acts of all these, whether it’s drug-induced paranoid spirals, or a somber recollections of a hollow life (or both), is where Scorsese stuns.
Killers of the Flower Moon felt like a 3.5 hour long third act of a Martin Scorsese film. 3.5 hours of a house of cards falling apart in slow motion. You get maybe a sliver of that glorification, but perhaps because it’s no longer the white man’s house of cards – it’s the Osage’s wealth, and not their evil – we only witness it fall apart. The first murder takes place minutes in (and is shockingly sparse in its depiction). In other words, it was over for them before it even started.
Can you Spot the Wolves in this Picture?
Therein lies the question of the film. If DeNiro is the literal embodiment of pure evil (and not particularly challenging as a result!), what does that make Leonardo DiCaprio’s character? We see the harm he inflicts but also the utter simplicity underpinning him. Is his character supposed to be that flat? Is Scorsese making a point about how greed intersects with a complete lack of convictions? Did Leo really love his wife, the rich member of the Osage? Did he think he did?
I’m not sure! And unfortunately, the ambiguity around those questions (contrasted with the otherwise overbearing nature of the film’s message) led me to not liking it as much as I would’ve hoped. I’m trying to find layers of subtext in a film that pulls no punches, that pretty explicitly shares what it thinks. I couldn’t help but compare it to Oppenheimer, a film that sticks with me because of how much it conveyed through what it didn’t say.
In comparison, Killers of the Flower Moon felt like an easier depiction of evil, maybe because the evil was so abundantly clear. And yet it does pull some punches! From a strangely apolitical/positive depiction of the FBI (the heroes!) to toothless depictions of historical context like the Tulsa Massacre and the KKK.
But there’s plenty to love here. For a 3.5 hour long movie, it never lost me. It never loosened its chilling grip, never let me get comfortable. I thought Lily Gladstone was phenomenal (Oscar?). I thought there were scenes dripping with jaw-dropping cinematography. I thought Scorsese’s decision to keep the score and camera movement sparse and ascetic was a huge strength. I loved the ending (which some may feel is too on the nose, but not me). And I’m thrilled to read about his engagement with the Osage Nation in creating this piece of work.
Regardless, I hope Marty never stops, and I hope you go out to watch this movie. We won’t get many more like it.
Rating: 7/10
See you all again next week. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.
Thanks for reading The Kino! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.