Martin Scorsese has finally made a Western at the age of 80, and it’s a knockout. The highly anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night, and it’s an epic tale set in the Osage Nation of Oklahoma during the early 1920s. The story is complex and harrowing, and it still resonates today. It’s hard to believe that such atrocities could have happened, but they did. Scorsese and his co-writer, Eric Roth, have adapted David Grann’s book of the same name, but they’ve taken a different approach. Instead of focusing on the FBI’s involvement, they’ve delved into the greed and money that drove white men to commit unspeakable acts. The film has a complicated love story at its core, and it’s a masterpiece in its own right.
Grann is a journalist-turned-bestselling author, and his works are perfect for the big screen. Scorsese has done justice to Grann’s best-known work, centering the story on the suspects involved in a diabolical scheme to take back what they believed was rightfully theirs. The Osage Indian Nation became the wealthiest per-capita people in the country when they struck oil on their land, but some very bad white men attempted to take it all away. The film is about greed and the lengths people will go to get rich. It’s also about the treatment of Native Americans by the white man, a topic that Hollywood has explored extensively. Scorsese has assembled an authentic cast, with more than 40 Native Americans in speaking roles, and he’s attempted to bury the transgressions of Hollywood’s past in telling these kinds of stories. Killers of the Flower Moon is a landmark motion picture achievement, and it’s a reminder of how far we haven’t come as a nation.
At the heart of the film is a love story, or so we’re led to believe. Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a wounded World War I veteran who returns to Oklahoma to work for his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro). Hale is a civic-minded figure who’s well-liked by the Osage, but he’s really just exploiting them. Burkhart is a happy-go-lucky guy who’s easily roped into Hale’s evil scheme. He falls in love with Mollie Kyke (Lily Gladstone), an attractive and smart Osage woman who seems smitten with him. They get married and have kids, but a mysterious series of deaths occur in the community, including Mollie’s own family. FBI agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) turns up to investigate, and things heat up as Mollie herself becomes sick.
Scorsese isn’t interested in making a murder mystery or focusing on the investigation. We know who’s responsible and why it’s happening. He’s interested in what’s between the lines, the unanswered questions, and how far people will go. The film is 3 1/2 hours long, but it doesn’t feel like it. The filmmaker and his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, don’t waste any time. The film is truly epic, and it’s all in service to the story.
DiCaprio is superb in a tricky role, and De Niro is deliciously slippery. Gladstone is terrific, and
