Film Review - Killers of the Flower Moon
Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Apple TV.
What may be Scorsese’s most comprehensively ‘Scorsese’ film yet, Killers of the Flower Moon incorporates the protagonist's return from war (Taxi Driver, The Irishman), a mastermind who rallies a gang to pull off a “job” (Goodfellas), a beautiful landscape and people surrounded with unspeakable violence (Silence), a protagonist who cannot escape his own nature (Raging Bull, The Aviator), an inescapable need for more (The Wolf of Wall Street), lying not out of utility but for survival (The Departed), and is all tied together through an incredibly empathetic eye and depictions of brutal violence.
It is clear from the outset that Killers of the Flower Moon is not a film for the faint of heart; it tracks the brutal murders and disappearances of native people in the Osage nation in the 1920s after the small nation became the wealthiest people per capita in the world. Based on the true recount from the novel of the same name, the movie follows the devastating atrocities inflicted on the community, and their connection to the self-proclaimed “true friend” to the Osage people, William K. Hale (Robert DeNiro), and his nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Although the film is three hours and twenty-six minutes long, it is difficult to summarise it without feeling like you’re about to “give the story away”, which is a testament to how Scorsese has brilliantly portrayed the horrifying act of barbarism and made every moment count. From the get-go, we are told the names of Osage people who had already died prior to the arrival of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character; each summary shows the person doing a mundane task while a voiceover reads their name and age and says that there was no investigation into their death; until we see a little girl playing around a picnic as the narration falls to silence before her mother's name is called out, one could only assume that there was a collective lump in every audience member's throat.
Scorsese has reflected on his career, saying that he feels that he’s run out of time and that: “I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time. Kurosawa… said, ‘I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late.’ He was 83. At the time, I said, ‘What does he mean?’ Now I know what he means.”
Watching this movie, you can feel that this is something new to Hollywood—more than the merging of a true story and the style of an auteur. The film uses disjointed audio from the visuals to emphasise the disconnection from the events taking place. A story that jumps from piece to piece, akin to his gangster films, but is self-aware in its similarity and strikingly different in tone. Scorsese has moved from telling stories that show the effects of the world on the main character and their interactions with the world inwardly - like Travis Bickle’s obsession with the “filth” and “greed” of New York City in Taxi Driver - to how the world is affected by the actions of the main character outwardly, as in The Irishman, where DeNiro’s character is defined by how he treats his family and friends, how they see him, and ultimately its effect on his soul.
Killers of the Flower Moon is not only a landmark film for Scorsese as a filmmaker but also tells the story of a horrific time in American history, surrounded in shame and regret, seen through the empathetic gaze of events that need to be told, to inform the world and work as a cautionary tale for the future. Gangsters, greed, westerns, and religion all intertwine to make this one of this year's best, and possibly Scorsese’s best; if these themes seem your speed, you might just be enticed to see it on the silver screen; needless to say, it’s worth it.
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Killers of the Flower Moon is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.