Directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) is a heartfelt, gloriously shot, perfectly scored, sweeping mea culpa of the collective consciousness of the (Wild) West, glaring into the abyss of its past, and the criminal genocidal eradication of the Native Peoples of North America. Conspicuously lacking in any of the usual Hollywood glamourisations of the greed that built an Empire, it is also a study in why films should never be too respectful of any topic beyond the duty to their own art form. Even masters as Scorsese, faced with important historical sensitivities, produce cinematically unexceptional work in their effort to elevate an authentic account of a true story that must be seen and heard.
Here, Scorsese is joined by his equally illustrious frequent collaborators, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, willing to strip themselves of all of their star regalia, along with any shred of a compelling human trait, in order to make absolutely clear that mass slaughter is most often committed by unremarkable, yet deeply abhorrent individuals — and only possible in full group collusion.
There is one problem with this ethically understandable approach — it’s not how quality storytelling works. It would be preposterous to even suggest that Scorsese is unaware of this fact, so my only conclusion is that he tried to override it with sheer force of joint talent.
The time is the 1920s in Oklahoma, USA, and the place is Osage Nation tribal land, after oil was discovered, making the people of the Osage the richest per capita in the country. This inevitably attracted every lowlife opportunist in the Midwest, of which there were plenty. The dully devious ur-villain William Hale, the self-named King, played by De Niro, is a local bigwig, ingratiating himself into the Osage community, learning the language and the customs, acting the respectful outsider while plotting to take over Osage land (which, by law, could only be inherited, not sold) through marrying off his swindling nephew Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) into one of the leading Osage families. And then killing off everyone else within that family tree.
What I most admire in Scorsese’s approach to the material is the incredible meta moment of Hollywood megastars performing in the roles of the most vile of men, allowing these celebrated screen faces to adopt the masks of dead-eyed murderers of innocents — thus leaving the audiences ample space to further question everything they might know about the way America was built.
As a counterpoint to this banality of evil, we are given a careful, detailed, and dignified portrayal of the Osage community, each one potentially the next target of Bill Hales, given scope and depth on screen — all their anguish finally converging into the Sphinx-like face of Mollie Burkhart, the focal point of the entire epic tragedy, played by Lily Gladstone, whose extraordinary acting skills matched and surpassed both DiCaprio and De Niro.
The minimalist style in which Gladstone reveals fierce emotional undercurrents only when the story absolutely necessitates it, yet manages to keep the audiences in emotional sync with her character of Mollie, throughout, is an exceptional feat in itself. It becomes even more impressive considering what Mollie in many ways represents in Killers of the Flower Moon — an individual symbolising a collective — not only her own Osage people, rather the destiny of the Native Americans.
The Osage’s evidently innate sense of being at home in their environment (although territorially displaced) naturally continues the conservation of the American Indian tradition well into the 20th century, even as the money from the oil made it particularly easy to fully adopt European ways. The indigenous understanding of the elements, a love of nature and the animal others, a sophisticated culture of inner and outer harmony, becomes even more strikingly surreal when juxtaposed with the restless unease of the opportunist intruders into their lifeway, whose general disconnect with their surroundings almost inevitably spawns tremendous envy and malice. In the eyes of the newcomers, the Osage look foolish in their beliefs and naive in their understanding, while the Osage, themselves, assess wisely the hunger and disrespect of the new arrivals, gauging their intentions fairly accurately — yet tragically failing to grasp the depths of their depravity. This gluttonous drive to pillage the Osage riches — and a complete lack of appreciation for the inner complexity of a society, might have used racism as fuel, but was driven by forces vastly more primal and psychopathic.
The scene where the future husband and wife, Mollie and Ernest, listen quietly to the storm outside, at her behest, and his incomprehension of this act, speaks volumes of the dissonance not only of the individuals involved, but of the civilisations converging.
The drifters and chancers marrying into the Osage Nation families for their headrights i.e. tribal inheritance are more that once described by the Osage as lazy and parasitic, but their inexplicable sense of entitlement to the indigenous fortunes stems not only from obvious bigotry. It travels much further, into the dark criminal heart of mob mentality — the pure kicks of an id given full reign in a lawless society, finding other, kindred spirits in the one-dimensional identity of joint interest such a mob offers.
Somehow, all the valiant effort to bring to life a complex and evidently covered-up story fails to work on a pure narrative level, despite the strong performances, and the thrilling third act twist of introducing federal officers of the then budding FBI (called the Bureau of Investigations), descending almost like a group of avenging angels on the corrupt criminal system laying siege to the Osage reservation, despite the US government’s own hypocritical bigoted laws of the time, prohibiting the Osage a direct control of their own money, and assigning them (white) guardians.
In making clear the reprehensible acts it depicts, in detail, and the disturbing origins story of the United States of America — through the forgotten murders of the members of the Osage Nation, the film fails primarily in an element that it most wanted to avoid — the contextualisation of the insatiable avarice of the colonising lumpenproletariat. An entire European criminal class descending on North American shores, amongst the sea of settlers genuinely in want of a better future. A narrative element which would have informed the clash of civilisations presented on screen with much more nuance and depth.
Scorsese’s truly honourable and praiseworthy adaptation of New York Times’ David Grann‘s eponymous bestselling book additionally suffers from a coherence problem, as it tries to be too many things all at once, approaching the tragedy from multiple angles — through aspects which collide rather than merge. It is, at the same time, a faithful historical account, an uncovering of a harrowing original crime, a satire of the myths of the entertainment industry, a chronology of the birth of the FBI, and a very personal depiction of betrayal in a marriage. And amongst all this, something of value seems to have been lost.
However, it still constitutes essential viewing.
★★★☆☆
Author: ©Milana Vujkov
Lola On Film 