“Where I am, I build my house; and where I build my house, all things come to it.”
- Osage proverb
Once, the people of the Osage nation, the indigenous Americans native to Oklahoma, were the richest people per capita in the United States, as stated in the first few minutes of Killers of the Flower Moon. Their homelands were rich in oil reservoirs and the spiritual leaders and elders managed to, in the early 20th century, successfully negotiate to receive the returns from leasing fees of communal mineral rights, called Osage headrights.
For most of the 1920s, because of their sudden wealth, the people of the Osage nation were targeted by systems of powerful white men who sought nothing but the acquirement of these headlights and possession of the oil-rich land by any means necessary. The wealth was slowly bled out by the exploitation of Native Americans, not having the European model of monetary value be a part of their lives, so soaring inflation ran rampant. There was also a process of white men marrying Osage women, who had full legal access to any familial rights, and waiting them out until their deaths meant full ownership of the wealth allotments. But this seemed to take too long as the “Reign of Terror” soon began, with total extortion, corruption, institutional racism, and murder permeating the state of Oklahoma for almost a decade. By the time the Bureau of Investigations stepped in, dozens, if not a hundred or so, Native Americans had been poisoned, shot, stabbed, dismembered, and vanished without a trace. Action was taken, the ringleaders spent some time in prison, almost a century passed before true reconciliation was recognised by the United States government, and it was all too late.
Before one turns away thinking of the United States of America being singular in their eradication of indigenous cultures over the last 100 years, we are no different. The Australian relationship with its Indigenous peoples is difficult and painful, and after the year we’ve had and all the steps taken towards true recognition, it is not likely to get any better any time soon. The White Australia Policy, the Black War in Tasmania, and the Stolen Generation are all parts of our history that we are so quick to forget if it means a less complicated life today. If we forget past mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them, as simplistic as that may be.
This truth informs emotions of horror, solemnity, and visceral anger that burn darkly through the core of Martin Scorsese’s new masterpiece Killers of the Flower Moon. Co-written by Scorsese and Eric Roth, based on the non-fiction book by David Grann, the picture focuses on the relationship of infantilised gambler Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and steadfast Osage woman Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), how they fell in love, raised a family, and the truth of Burkhart’s intentions at the behest of his uncle and ringleader of a genocidal plot William King Hale (Robert De Niro).
Leonardo DiCaprio leads the film with the inviting yet duplicitous presence that Scorsese is best at unleashing from him. His illiterate and hapless Burkhart is a pawn in the games of the powerful and feels remorse for his actions while still committing them all the same, an intense complexity that DiCaprio is perfectly cast to explore. De Niro’s Hale is perhaps his most villainous role to date, equally complex as Burkhart in how ingratiated the man was with the Osage nation’s culture and language. Still, he saw himself as serving a “higher purpose” and never once thought of the reality of his actions. De Niro is harnessing a blackness of the eyes that he has done so well for Scorsese before, doubled by his evident age, and reminds us all why he is still one of the best ever to do it.
The film is filled with vivid characters played to perfection by an overwhelming cast, such as Tantoo Cardinal (Mollie’s mother Lizzie Q), Cara Jade Myers (Mollie’s sister Anna Brown), Scott Shepherd (Ernest’s brother Byron Burkhart), Tatanka Means (undercover BOI agent John Wren), William Belleau (Henry Roan), Ty Mitchell (John Ramsey), and the always brilliant Jesse Plemons (BOI agent Tom White). But above all others stands tall the astonishing, picturesque, incisive, heartbreaking, and truly disarming performance of Lily Gladstone. Serving as an infrequent narrator to a montage of Osage deaths that were never investigated, Gladstone’s Mollie has a once-in-a-generation intensity and focus in her movements, elocution, her wry smile, and casts such an enchanting and empathetic energy across the whole movie. Gladstone is asked to go to all manners of horrible places to bring to light the life of Mollie Kyle, who loved and laughed as much as she was poisoned physically and emotionally, brought to the brink of death and survived the elimination of almost her entire family. Though there is a concern over her inactive nature as a character, but such is the way of truth that Mollie Kyle was powerless to stop the snakes in her bed, destroying all she loved slowly and surely, so above this rises the vast nature of Gladstone’s heartbreaking performance that leaves one emotionally riveted. And to think she was going to quit acting before getting this role.
A decade is explored in the film’s monumental 206-minute runtime, beginning in 1917 and ending in 1926, and it is a singular epic in every sense of those words. Scorsese, Roth, and his longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, draw such rich tension in every scene and with every conversation, whether they be about the ethereal beauty of silence or inane talk between clueless men about the logistics of murder. The film crafts an effective spell with its circulating and embroidered screenplay, as each scene flows together perfectly with a subject being brought up once and executed in the subsequent scene, over and over again until the credits roll. This type of direction in the writing and editing process keeps the runtime feeling efficient and earned, as our attention is never lost in a sea of motivations and exposition.
There is a specificity and majesty to the visual elements that perhaps rivals the very best of Scorsese’s collaborations with cinematographers, costumers, and production designers. Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of choice for The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, and The Irishman, uses a chemistry of radical techniques to craft something that best represents Scorsese’s own method of blending progressive ambition with classical practices. We see 35mm film used for daylit and outdoor scenes, digital cameras used for low-light and night-time scenes, and several moments shot with period-accurate hand-cranked film cameras. Prieto’s pure and crisp lighting gives the film its beauty and darkness in equal measure, as do sweeping crane shots, which are composed magnificently with a stark, locked-down approach for some of the most brutal moments in the film. Jacqueline West’s costumes and Jack Fisk’s sets reveal some of the most detailed visual elements, unveiling so much forgotten or untold history in how Osage women dressed for weddings, how 1920s houses were constructed, the speed and weight of the old motorcars, and the importance of certain colours that Osage men and women chose to dress themselves in everyday. This is a $200 million budget to some terrific effect, every cent present on screen for total audience immersion in a century past.
I would be remiss not to mention the passing of Robbie Robertson last year, a fellow longtime Scorsese collaborator dating back to 1978’s The Last Waltz, and Killers of the Flower Moon marks his final composition, with it being some of his very finest work. Robertson and Scorsese’s collaboration has always been unique, producing everything from one or two tracks, a curated selection of classical pieces, and a full orchestra and band, and with Killers, Robertson drew from his Indigenous heritage and blues band origins to craft something truly special. There are traditional percussion and wind instruments mixed with a meditative harmonica all underscored by the omnipresent bass line, like a dying heartbeat that informs much of the foreboding atmosphere of the picture.
Killers of the Flower Moon is not an easy experience. It is an exercise in the values of slow cinema and patience with pacing, having long and uneasy scenes of people conversing in frank and overlapping dialogues that is a rhythm to obey in of itself. As this flame burns on, it transforms into something truly remorseful, a long obituary for those who never received such a distinction. The film exposes in crucial detail the deeply-rooted systemic racism in medicine, commerce, infrastructure, politics, and basic communication that has permeated in the American consciousness for far too long. There are no heroes here, only villains and victims.
Martin Scorsese’s decision to pivot this entire story away from law enforcement and to a more honourable focus on the practices, beliefs, and vast culture of the Osage is a remarkable one, as Killers of the Flower Moon will educate many on forgotten history and invite them to share in the eternal memory of those that survived to tell the story on and on. This is a masterwork of the highest order, a haunting and stunning showcase of darkness, duplicity, delicacy, and the slow erasure of natural beauty. The final sequence alone, playing out without any main characters on screen, is perhaps the greatest ending in Martin Scorsese’s career.
Killers of the Flower Moon is now available to stream on Apple TV+ and rent on most major platforms.
