Every story is told from a perspective, a point of view. In a film that is multiplied as there is the perspective of the people making the film, and the point of view (aka the character) they chose to tell the story from. All these factors affect how a narrative is told and how an audience is meant to receive it. Martin Scorsese’s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon is based on the novel, which has the subtitle, “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.” In an earlier version of the script, Bureau of Investigations agent Tom White (played by Jesse Plemons) was a more central character to played by Leonardo DiCaprio, but when DiCaprio asked Scorsese where the heart of the story was and he said it was with Ernest and Mollie Burkhart (played by Lily Gladstone), DiCaprio said he’d play Ernest. That shifted the centering of the script to the version we get today.
Martin Scorsese consulted, dined, and had members of the Osage community contribute to the story on camera, allowing them to give in-character monologues, in the vein of Nomadland, that spoke to their anger for their ancestors and themselves, as they still have to deal with the same governmental injustices that don’t allow them full governing of their land, and lists them as “incompetent” as a means to control the land-use. The film makes it very clear from the beginning what is going on to the Osage people, that they are being murdered for their headrights (oil money), that they are being taken advantage of every time someone white lists the cost of something because you don’t even have to know how much it should cost to know that they’ve inflated it.
This film isn’t made for the Osage, who know the story. It’s for the people who when watching Watchmen (2019) got first introduced to the Tulsa Race Massacre (which also gets referenced in this film a couple of times in the film). We have a history and education problem, and Martin Scorsese, if there is something he’s going to do with his passion films, is give audiences an unsettling history lesson. This is a film for “the wolves” because like Ernest and William Hill (played by Robert De Niro) we don’t have a leg to stand on saying that we care (or love) the indigenous people of our countries when they are constantly fighting for environmental protections only to be met with resistance (and often violence). There are thousands of abandoned methane-spewing wells on Osage land that they’ve asked for funds to seal, but climate denial in the US Federal Government has undermined their efforts. As long as they are listed as “incompetent” by the government, citizens of that government are all complicit.
The film is three and a half hours, but it clips by. I’m someone who easily drifts if there is a lag, but I found no lag here. It’s not a film that relies on suspense, you know exactly what’s going on from the beginning. Who these people are, and what their nature is. It never comes into question, the only question is will the line ever be too far for Ernest who “loves” his wife but is willing to have all the people she cares about killed to have sole control of her headrights when she dies.
Lily Gladstone is fabulous in this and is missed throughout large passages in the second half of the film when she isn’t present. Christopher Cote, who worked as a language consultant on the film, speaking with The Hollywood Reporter said, “As an Osage, I really wanted this to be from the perspective of Mollie and what her family experienced, but I think it would take an Osage to do that.” I don’t know if I necessarily want to see this story told again from a different perspective (though give it a few years and maybe). But I hope that doors will open for more Osage and other Native American stories told from their perspectives. Lily Gladstone, who before receiving the role in Killers of the Flower Moon, was considering leaving acting can also be seen in Fancy Dance, which was at Sundance this year and will perhaps receive wider distribution in the wake of her inevitable Oscar buzz for Mollie.
Killers of The Flower Moon is in cinemas now, it marks the final collaboration of Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson (composer), to whom the film is dedicated. They began their collaborations when Scorsese directed The Last Waltz, the concert film for The Band, which Robertson is a member of; Robertson would go on to compose music for Raging Bull. Robertson’s mother was raised in the Six Nations reserve, southwest of Toronto, making this a fitting film for their final collaboration.
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