Killers of the Flower Moon: Scorsese at His Best Documents America at its Worst
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B+
Martin Scorsese takes on an ugly piece of American history with the true-crime story Killers of the Flower Moon.
The film, based on David Grann’s fascinating book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, is about an alarming series of murders in the early 20th century in Osage territory in Oklahoma, often called the “Reign of Terror.”
What made the Osage vulnerable to exploitation? Money.
In the late 1800s, the Osage discovered oil on their land and that made each member of the tribe extremely wealthy. Laws were enacted to make sure that money stayed in the hands of the families. Even still, there was a racist tinge to the laws that forced each person to have a white “guardian” to take care of their money. Unsavoury characters aimed to profit by any means possible.
The book unfolds like a murder-mystery investigation with the guilty revealed towards the end. For the film, Scorsese and his co-writer Eric Roth flip that, focusing on characters so that from early on, we know who is guilty. The film paints a portrait of venality and greed. It's also about a specific era in American history: the end of the “wild west” as it transitioned into the modern era, in many ways a time of changing ideas.
Leonardo DiCaprio is the feckless Ernest Burkhart, returning from the war with an injury that limits what he can do for work. Lucky for him, his rich uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro) lives in the Osage territory. Hale likes to point out that unlike many other white men, he has no financial stake in the oil business of his neighbours. He’s steeped in the language and customs of his Osage neighbours and the elders, including chief Bonnicastle (Yancey Red Corn) who trust him.
With his uncle’s encouragement, Burkhart meets, woos, and marries the sensible, quiet Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and the two get on with having children and building a life together. Burkhart seems to truly be devoted to his wife, yet he is working for his uncle at the same time.
Hale and Burkhart are there to console Mollie as her sister Anna (Cara Jade Myers) is found murdered, and then other members of her family die, including her mother Lizzy Q (Tantoo Cardinal).
It's not just Mollie's family that are grieving. The deaths continue to mount in the community with no answers about who is committing these murders. Ultimately the Osage go to Washington to appeal directly to the president.
From there, determined lawman Tom White (Jesse Plemons) turns up to investigate. The last part of the film becomes about his investigation, including the work of First Nations detective John Wren (Tatanka Means) before it transitions into a courtroom drama, with John Lithgow playing prosecutor Peter Leaward, and Brendan Fraser the bombastic defence lawyer W.S. Hamilton.
With all of this immorality as its focus, Killers of the Flower Moon fits with one of the themes that Scorsese has so effectively covered in his career: the mob boss and their henchmen, characters who live their lives with a level of murderous immorality, driven by power and greed.
He’s entrusted those roles to a series of characters, notably DiCaprio and De Niro who — no surprise — are riveting to watch as these immoral men who seem unfettered by conscience. There are no screaming monsters here, which makes the film more complex, and more affecting.
It was important to Scorsese that he represented the Osage people, and he has woven their story in with a light but effective hand. The community was consulted before the filming and has since given the film its endorsement. Although the movie focuses a lot of its running time on the bad guys, its soul comes from its connection to the Osage people. Scorsese’s choices, particularly towards the end of the movie, are quite moving.
There is, of course, the question of the film’s running time. Killers of the Flower Moon is a bladder-challenging three-and-a-half hours. As well, it’s a slow-burn movie that doesn’t have action sequences but relies on storytelling and its elements (the cast, the look and feel of the movie) to provide the drama and tension to keep us in our seats. If anyone has the skills to do this, to make it an experience worth sitting through, it is Martin Scorsese.
That said, the length has downsides. The movie isn’t as impactful as it might have been if he’d gone for a tighter running length. The characters don’t have big revelatory moments that leave us with easy answers and have us walking out of the theatre feeling uplifted.
At the same time, there isn’t really a wasted moment in the movie. Scorsese is a master at his peak who has made deliberate choices about the story he wants to tell, and the way he wants to tell it, and he makes all of it count.
Killers of The Flower Moon. Written by Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Tantoo Cardinal. In theatres, October 20; on AppleTV+ thereafter.