Movie Review: 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Written by Martin Scorsese, Eric Roth

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro

Release Date October 20th, 2023

Published October 20th, 2023

For his latest film, director Martin Scorsese is not taking it easy with a lengthy true story filled with just the kind of sad, cynical and violent men that have fascinated Scorsese for decades. Taking on the case that provided the foundation of the modern FBI, Scorsese takes us to the heart of Osage Country in Oklahoma. Here, a group of Native Americans happened to strike oil and as the money flowed, the Osage thrived. Then came a group of leeches, con artists and hardened criminals with a taste for both blood and money. As much as racism has a major part to play in what came next, greed is also at the rotting, curdled core of what happened to the Osage people.

We open on a ceremony. A group of Native Americans are in a tent and delivering exposition in a rather unique way. Via this ceremony, we are drawn into the time period, just after the discovery of oil rich land and just before murderers, thieves, and parasites came looking to rob the Osage people of their newfound wealth. In this ceremony, the elders share a peace pipe that they are laying to rest, it's taught them all it can teach and it is to be symbolically buried. The symbolism is obvious, the death of the old ways and the start of an unpredictable, one that is murky and likely dangerous.

It's a brilliant opening and it sets the stage for everything that we will see going forward in Killers of the Flower Moon. From there we leap ahead to a train where a man is coming home from the first world war. Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio), could not possibly have a more appropriate name. With his lack of education and naïve willingness to take things at face value, Ernest is earnestness personified. Ernest has come to the Osage country on the invitation of his Uncle Bill (Robert De Niro), though he knows him as King. Ernest's Uncle welcomes him with open arms and immediately sets about manipulating the simple young man in the ways of his con.

King Bill has befriended the Osage but the reality is gravely sinister. In an effort to get at Native American land rights, King has weaseled his way into Native American society. He's positioned people in key families with the goal of marrying into Native American families and then, and this is not made explicit immediately, either blatantly murdering them or slowly poisoning them in order to inherit their fortune. With the arrival of Ernest, King has a perfect candidate for this scheme. Though Ernest is simple, he's also handsome and confident around women. He's just the man to use to catch a woman's eye.

With King's prodding, Ernest starts looking out for Osage women and uses his job as a taxi driver for King to get close to one of them, Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Though King gave Ernest a push toward finding an Osage woman to marry, he didn't know much about Mollie when he met her. He knew she was well dressed and like most Native Americans in the area, she carried herself as someone who has means. But Ernest didn't know if she was actually rich and thus there is at least a little something genuine to his desire to meet her, get close and eventually marry her.

The chemistry of DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone is palpable. There is a simple sweetness to their tentative early romance. That's before that snake, King Bill, slithers his way between husband and wife, convincing Ernest to use his position as her husband to keep Mollie in line while he conspires to remove obstacles between Mollie's inheritance and simpleminded Ernest who would stand to gain from his wife's inheritance while his trusting nature would allow him to easily be manipulated by his Uncle King. Ernest and Mollie settle in, start having kids and Ernest seems to thrive as a man of money who spends days playing pool and drinking whiskey and his nights, when he isn't doting on his loving wife, handling shady business for King Bill.

Killers of the Flower Moon is the kind of lengthy movie that never feels long. Each set piece that Scorsese sews into the fabric of Killers of the Flower Moon is intricately placed and serves an important purpose. Scorsese conducts Killers of the Flower Moon like a classical symphony with rarely a stray note. Killers of the Flower Moon is precise even as it is sprawling over several years worth of incidents that amounted to the systematic, secretive genocide of the Osage people. It was insidious and cruel and horrifically effective, white men marrying Native women and systematically using marital connections to steal away millions of dollars via oil rights deals.

Robert De Niro is extraordinary in Killers of the Flower Moon. His ruthless dedication to greed is brilliantly masked by his snaky intelligence. De Niro's King is a man who can stab another man in the back with one hand while shaking his hand with the other. The key is how King never gets his own hands dirty. He's mastered the art of manipulating lesser men, harder men, men dedicated to violence and eager for people like King to give them a place to monetize their taste for blood. While smiling and speaking the native tongue of the Osage, King lures them in just close enough to slide a metaphorical knife between their ribs, hugging them close as they bleed out.

The echoes of tragedy ring loud from the real history of the oil boom and what came after. Happening in the background of Killers of the Flower Moon, Tulsa's Black Wall Street was burned to the ground and hundreds were killed in yet another greed driven, racially motivated crime. While the Osage were killed slowly as people like King Bill snaked their way into the inner circle of the Osage people, Black Wall Street suffered immediately and publicly, they are twin tragedies, stains on the soul of America that we cannot wash away. With Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese confronts us with the ghosts of the past and the harrowing, awful ordeals that an unending lust for money causes.

Putting to one side the historical aspects of Killers of the Flower Moon, the cinematic aspects are exceptionally powerful as well. Scorsese and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's masterful visuals, Thelma Schoonmaker's precise editing, and the unique devices Scorsese employs to tell this story and give it a satisfying and tragic conclusion are remarkable. The visual storytelling of Killers of the Flower moon is extraordinary, captured well in a scene where King prays in native language and camera pulls away creating the kind of physical distance that matches the actual emotional distance between King and his faking his way through a prayer he certainly doesn't mean. It's a little thing but the simplicity is part of the genius.

The ending of Killers of the Flower Moon catches you off guard. The film doesn't have a traditional ending, instead Scorsese decides to insert himself into the movie to provide a haunting coda that marries the cinematic to the real world as we learn the real fates of these characters we've met. Scorsese is a character in this moment, but he's also revealing himself as the storyteller, the stage manager of this historic tale. It's an ingenious cinematic device. This is all based on the true story of the Osage Murders but the final device Scorsese uses to complete the story is all about the way we tell stories, the manufacturing of reality to convey what really happened.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a haunting howl from the past that echoes to the present and will linger until we find some way to reckon with the historic injustices. This goes not just for the tragedy inflicted on the Osage, it goes for Black Wall Street in Tulsa, the Red Wave that engulfed emerging minority communities in the lawless 20s and 30s, and lingers despite historic attempts to hide our sins even today. As I write this, there are schools in Oklahoma that aren't legally allowed to tell this story. There are schools in Florida that call it racism against white people if you try and teach people about this story or black wall street, or any other historic injustice inflicted by white people against minorities. Killers of the Flower Moon is both an incredible movie and one that is an intentional rebuke to those who would try to hide these parts of our history.

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