Killers of the Flower Moon
Some thoughts on the movie.
NOTE: There will be spoilers throughout for the film Killers of the Flower Moon.
It might surprise you to hear that I—a thirty-something-year-old white guy—was really excited about the new Martin Scorsese movie. I’ve also been interested in Killers of the Flower Moon as someone who lives in Oklahoma and has read the David Grann book. I’m a Lily Gladstone fan, so I was especially excited about seeing her as one of the leads in a Scorsese movie. I was even more interested when I saw two of my favorite country singers—Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson —were added to the cast, as well as it being shot by Rodrigo Prieto1.
According to my research assistant2, Scorsese traveled to Pawhuska, Oklahoma, during pre-production and met with Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear to discuss how the Osage Nation could be involved in making the movie. This meeting led Scorsese to rethink how they were approaching Killers and to quote the man himself: “After a certain point, I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys. Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me.” Instead of centering the movie on the FBI investigation, Scorsese set out to center the Osage and immerse us in their community.
The opening montage of the Osage discovering oil and the explosion of wealth that follows could fool anyone into thinking they’re about to watch Goodfellas: Oklahoma3. I while it does resemble that in parts—especially during the last hour—it’s clear that we’re watching a different kind of movie as Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives at the sprawling cattle ranch of his uncle William King Hale (Robert DeNiro) and the two sit down for a fateful conversation where Hale starts laying out the operation (“The Reign of Terror,” as it was called) to his dimwitted nephew.
Scorsese’s often accused of only making movies about how awesome it is for criminals to do crime. Half of this is true because in some movies (Goodfellas, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street), the first half of the movie usually is about criminals having the time of their lives killing, stealing, screwing, and all other kinds of unChristlike behavior. But if the first half is about forking around, Scorsese’s Catholicism means the second is about finding out. So after we’ve had fun living the high life with guys like Henry Hill or Jordan Belfort, the law catches up with them and we’re forced to reckon with what it is we may or may not have been cheering on for the last two-plus hours.
There’s no high like this in Flower Moon because from the beginning, we’re seeing the victims of the crimes being committed. In The Wolf of Wall Street, there’s no scenes interspersed with the main action showing all the people scammed out of their money by Jordan Belfort; it’s something we’re left to ponder on our own as he gears up for his next scheme. During that first conversation in Flower Moon where King calls the Osage “a beautiful people” while also telling Ernest their time is up as well as mocking the way they sound speaking their native tongue, there’s no attempt to make these people or this kind of life seem appealing.
After this sit down, Scorsese cuts to an Osage man writhing around on the ground foaming at the mouth. “John Whitehair, age 23,” we hear Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) narrate in voiceover. “No investigation.” What follows is a montage of other Osage people being killed or found dead as Mollie tells us their names, age, and that there was no investigation. We see a young Osage mother shot dead on her front lawn by a white man who comes out from the house and takes her baby out of the stroller and back inside. Mollie tells us this was reported as a suicide.
I’ve been on the Lily Gladstone bandwagon since Certain Women. After almost giving up on acting, she’s come back in a big way this year with Quantum Cowboys, Fancy Dance, The Unknown Country, and now Killers of the Flower Moon. I keep thinking about that first dinner scene where Ernest is coming in way too hot to where she responds by saying, “Coyote wants money!” With less dialogue and screen time than the rest of the main cast, saying that she’s giving a quietly powerful performance feels like I’m waving away all those concerns, but there are few actors I’ve seen working today who can change the temperature of the scene with a look. She’s not rising to match Leo’s energy; she’s bringing him down to hers.
These days, whenever a movie is three hours long, unless the characters are wearing spandex and have special powers, the length is immediately counted against it and my argument is that any bad three-hour movie is because the filmmaker didn’t have the kind of story to justify telling it over three hours. The Reign of Terror almost requires three hours to delve into, just to show how the whole town was in on it. This movie’s been called a “true crime epic,” which makes me think this would’ve been devoured on Netflix if someone else had turned it into an eight-episode docuseries. But then it would just be one really compelling first episode followed by seven episodes of vamping and the documentarians going “this is pretty weird and gross, right?? and it happened in *gag* Oklahoma!!” over real-life footage of people and/or animals being abused and killed. But enough about Tiger King.
After the premiere, Christopher Cote, one of the Osage language consultants, had this to say about the movie overall:
“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. Martin Scorsese, not being Osage, I think he did a great job representing our people, but this history is being told almost from the perspective of Ernest Burkhart and they kind of give him this conscience and kind of depict that there’s love. But when somebody conspires to murder your entire family, that’s not love. That’s not love, that’s just beyond abuse.”
There’s also a quote from Lily Gladstone from Variety that gets at the same point:
“Marty is a titan, but he’s not bigger than history. He’s a major shaper of it though. It’s the tricky nature of a story like this. You have more representation, but coming from somebody who’s not from the community. So you always have to look at it with a different angle. And there’s nothing wrong with that; you just have to be very aware of the film that you’re watching and what lens it was made through.”
As well rendered the Osage are in Killers of the Flower Moon, the title of the movie itself proves their point. At the end of the day, the movie was always going to be from the perspective of titular killers being made by someone who was not Osage. And because it’s a movie about crime, eventually the law catches up and that becomes the story. The detective thriller starring Jesse Plemons4 is fun to watch because it’s a movie is directed by Martin Scorsese and while switching into that gear after watching two hours of abject horror is a relief, it does remind you of whose perspective the movie is mostly planted in.
Scorsese clearly understands this as it informs the ending where we’re watching an FBI-sponsored radio program telling the exciting story of the FBI saving the day. Marty himself makes a cameo as the radio show producer who comes out on stage to read Mollie Burkhart’s obituary, followed by a remark that there was no mention of the murders in the obituary. If Marty didn’t have a history of making cameos in his films, this would seem indulgent. Hopefully it won’t be the last and it would be great for the next attempt to come from an Osage perspective, but I see Marty’s cameo as a way of acknowledging that he’s not the ideal storyteller, but he did his best to do right by Mollie Burkhart’s story. The movie then closes with an overhead shot of modern-day Osage taking part in a tribal dance as the camera moves higher to get a full view of it.
This year also had the finale of Reservation Dogs, a three-season masterpiece set in the Muscogee Nation that was full of humor, heartbreak, pretty much anything Sterlin Harjo and his team of all-Native creative talent felt like exploring. What Harjo did with that show was turn it into opportunities for Native filmmakers like Devery Jacobs and Erica Tremblay to write and direct multiple episodes. Tremblay has a movie that will hopefully come out sometime soon that I mentioned earlier called Fancy Dance. Jacobs has yet to break into film as a writer/director yet5, but she wrote one of my favorite episodes of the show, a riff on Richard Linklater movies guest starring Ethan Hawke. Hopefully years from now, we’ll see one of these folks get $200 million to tell whatever story they want.
At the end of the day, if anyone non-Native was going to make this, thank God it was Marty. I don’t even want to imagine what the discourse would’ve looked like if we’d gotten something like Taylor Sheridan’s Killers of the Flower Moon instead.
I’ve put a list of articles and podcasts below that I read/listened to prepping this. The Reel Indigenous podcast in particular was really insightful as far as breaking down details about the Osage people Scorsese did and didn’t get right in the movie.
“All Eyes on Lily Gladstone” from Vulture by Alison Willmore
“Lily Gladstone on Welcoming ‘Flower Moon’ Criticism, Mollie’s Agency and Scorsese’s Limitations While Telling an Osage Story” from Variety by Selome Hailu
“Killers of the Flower Moon Is Not the Story an Osage Would Have Told. You Should Still See It.” from Slate by Joel Robinson
“Killers of the Flower Moon Review by Indigenous Voices” - Reel Indigenous podcast
“Killers of the Flower Moon Review” - The Cinematic Schematic podcast
The man also was the cinematographer for Barbie. What a legend.
Wikipedia.
RIP Robbie Roberston. The score is incredible. Really made me think of Ry Cooder.
It reminded me a lot of Kyle Chandler’s FBI agent in The Wolf of Wall Street.
I say “writer/director” specifically because she’s been acting for several years now.
Great read! I’m convinced that those who criticize Scorsese for “glamorizing” violence in his movies, have never watched his movies fully or they just don’t care for anything that’s underneath the surface.