Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Meyers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi
Genre: Crime/Drama
Run Time: 206 min
Opens: 19 October 2023
Rating: PG13
“This is cinema” – if you’ve spent any time in internet spaces occupied by cinephiles, you’ll have seen this quote attributed to Martin Scorsese, often used ironically to describe movies like Morbius. Yes, Scorsese has taken on the role of saving cinema from the clutches of comic book movies and franchise filmmaking, sentiments which have seen him celebrated by some and derided by others. Any way you cut it, a new Scorsese movie is an event, and Killers of the Flower Moon, recounting a dark chapter in American history, arrives after a great deal of anticipation.
It is the 1920s and the Osage Nation has become wealthy because of the oil deposits on their land in northeastern Oklahoma. Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns home from serving as a cook in the military overseas. His uncle is William Hale (Robert De Niro), a political boss and cattle rancher who has extensive business dealings with the Osage Nation. Ernest works as a driver and gets to know one of his passengers, Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Encouraged by his uncle, Ernest falls in love with Mollie and marries her.
In the meantime, there is a spate of 60 or more murders of Osage people, which the authorities do nothing about. Mollie’s sister Anna (Cara Jade Meyers) is among the people who are brutally murdered. After a delegation of Osage people, including Mollie, brings this to the attention of President Calvin Coolidge in Washington, D.C., the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) sends special agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) to investigate. A criminal conspiracy involving the headrights to oil-rich land unravels, with Ernest caught in the middle of it.
Adapted from the non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon is a cinematic event. There’s no denying Scorsese’s mastery of the medium and the movie is handsomely shot by Rodrigo Prieto, with Scorsese’s regular editor Thelma Schoonmaker returning. The movie combines the vast sweep of an old-fashioned western and the backroom scheming and machinations of a crime saga, something Scorsese is no stranger to.
There is a specificity to the time and place in which the movie is set, and the filmmakers are clearly taking great pains to do justice to this important story. The movie succeeds in part because its elements are so recognisable – it’s a story about greed. The manipulation and exploitation depicted in the film continue to happen in different forms, in different contexts around the world. The story has many moving parts but is straightforward. As drawn in the screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese, the characters are sometimes larger than life, but always feel like real people.
Much has been made of the movie’s epic 207-minute runtime. Yes, Killers of the Flower Moon feels long. It’s certainly not as much as an endurance test of the torture-heavy Silence, but it feels long. Could it have worked as a TV miniseries instead? Possibly, but watching it in one sitting does lend the movie a certain power that it might not have in another format. The movie is often absorbing, but stops short of being completely riveting, in part because there is no mystery – we don’t start out knowing all the details of the murders, but we know who is masterminding them from the beginning, so it isn’t suspenseful, but also doesn’t seem intended to be. An earlier draft of the script apparently had the Tom White character as the protagonist and that’s who DiCaprio had signed on to play, but it was rewritten to centre Ernest Burkhart instead and function more as a psychological drama than a detective thriller.
Killers of the Flower Moon features two of Scorsese’s frequent collaborators, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, both doing excellent work. DiCaprio plays a character who seems a little dopey and is unabashed about how much he loves money, which motivates him to act in unsavoury ways. There are times when DiCaprio puts on his “I’m acting!” face (you know the one), but other times when he convincingly inhabits the character.
This is one of De Niro’s best performances in recent memory. There is an admirable restraint here, such that he isn’t doing too much, and indeed doesn’t need to. William Hale is a glad-handing local politician who will stab you in the back while smiling at you, and De Niro plays this well. De Niro has said the movie depicts “the banality of evil,” and he effectively essays someone who acts in monstrous ways but goes about it routinely.
Lily Gladstone’s performance is a highlight of the movie. Many Hollywood movies about Native American history have sidelined their Native American characters, and while DiCaprio and De Niro are top-billed, Gladstone is as much a dynamo of the movie as they are. Her Mollie is outwardly frail, suffering from diabetes, but has a steadfastness and inner strength to her. Gladstone is quietly commanding as a woman who is surrounded by tragedy but never stops fighting. The relationship between Ernest and Mollie, and the question of if Ernest has ever truly loved his wife, is one that runs throughout the movie and is something that both DiCaprio and Gladstone play brilliantly.
Summary: Killers of the Flower Moon is another excellent movie by Martin Scorsese, who continues to demonstrate a mastery of the form. The period crime drama sees Scorsese reunite with frequent collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, who are both excellent, but it is Lily Gladstone whose quietly commanding performance is the highlight. The story of greed driving people to do terrible things is one that’s been told many times before, but the historical context makes this story worth telling. Over its gargantuan runtime, the movie is sometimes less-than-gripping, especially since it isn’t structured as a mystery. But it is a movie that compels the audience to follow along to see where all the terrible, cruel decisions the characters make eventually lead them.
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
Jedd Jong
The movie and me 