Killers of the Flower Moon

Lily Gladwell just became the first native woman to ever win a Golden Globe and though I do not put too much stock in the Golden Globes it was still a great moment. That said, as happy as I am for her, I didn’t see Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters. And as it is inevitably going to be an Oscar contender I needed to see it before nominations came out. I will say that I resisted this movie because I really don’t like Scorsese. His movies are boring and repetitive and I take issue with anyone who appoints themselves the end all, be all of film. That said, I am going into this movie a little bit biased against him. So here we go with my official review of Killers of the Flower Moon.

Another intentionally uncomfortable movie. There were a lot of those in 2023. Seems like film has finally returned to being commentary like I like. That said, this film and its message would be a lot stronger if it were told from Mollie’s point of view and not from the point of view of the white men that committed these horrible crimes. That said, I don’t really want white men speaking for a native woman so I guess it's fine. Really the problem is that other people feel the need to tell our stories for us and it immediately weakens them. Every movie written about the female experience by a man is horribly sexist and terrible. It’s the same thing, people who have no ties or stake in a story feel that they are somehow the best ones to tell it and that's just not how it works.

Robert De Niro was the perfect casting choice for the evil son of a bitch that was behind these murders. A murderer kingpin is evil all on his own, but a murderer kingpin who does his crime from the inside, as an ally to the Osage people? Truly disgusting. And I don’t think there was anyone who could have portrayed that better.

Lily Gladwell is a showstopper. Decades of talent surrounded her in this cast and yet she was the star. Not once was she outshined by any of her costars. The slow, quiet, seething anger and deep sorrow that she conveyed was so well done.

Not seeing this in theaters was a great idea. It is simply too long. If you are going to have theatrical releases over 2.5 hours then they need to have intermissions and we need to start making going to the theaters a whole event. But also about 45 minutes of this movie could absolutely have been cut out. Scorsese just didn't want to edit, but it did not need to be 3.5 hours.

The pacing is really slow. I think that if we didn’t have as much dead time between deaths then the impact of everything Mollie had lost would have been a lot stronger. The danger for the Osage women would have been more palpable and the tension would have been more intense. But there was just so much down time and too many quiet moments in between. Especially since the story was set after the first death, we knew what was happening and we didn’t need a set up for every single death. After the first 2 sisters died we could have picked up the pace.

The cinematography is good. Nothing special or unique but it told the story in the way that it was supposed to.

One thing that I picked up on that I really loved was the title cards at the beginning of the movie, and the sign held in the parade were all written in a font that looked really similar to the font they used in the title cards in Birth of a Nation (1915). Birth of a Nation was a very VERY racist film that portrayed the KKK as heroes. Killers of the Flower Moon tells the story of white men stealing from the Osage people. I think it's a brilliant connection and a very subtle one that I am actually very impressed by. 1 point for Scorsese.

Overall I think the movie was fine. I would personally give it an 8/10, no movie over 3 hours gets a score higher than that. Lily was incredible and definitely deserves her Oscar but I think we need to stop treating this movie as some groundbreaking feat of filmmaking. Film bros just deepthroat Scorsese’s boots so hard like everything he does is sent from God. But the reality is this wasn’t his story to tell and it would have been told better from an Osage writer, or any native writer for that matter. Mollie as a character was severely underdeveloped and most of the screentime was given to showing the white men and their motives. Not nearly enough time was spent with Mollie and her mental and emotional state following her loss.