Review of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro

Streaming on Apple TV+ is Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a monumental saga of the banality of evil based on the true story of a series of murders that swept through the Osage Indian Reservation in the 1920s. The main roles in the film were brilliantly played by the director’s constant muses Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as Lily Gladstone, who turned from an almost unknown actress into a favorite of the current awards season. Talks about one of the main films of 2023 Julia Shagelman.

In the 1970s, the Osage Tribe was resettled by the US government from its ancestral territories, which became the state of Kansas, to Oklahoma – a land so empty and barren that no one else claimed it. However, several decades later, oil was unexpectedly discovered here, and thanks to a smart agreement once concluded by the tribal leaders with the authorities, the income from it began to go to the Osages. They had to share with white “guardians” (most of the Indians were listed as incompetent in the documents), but there was so much money that the Osages became millionaires. At the beginning of the twentieth century, “white” newspapers, without hiding their xenophobic indignation, wrote about how redskins were buying Rolls-Royces, ordering furniture and clothes from Europe and hiring white servants, and oil owners who wanted to develop fields in Oklahoma were forced to negotiate with them. Of course, this couldn’t go on for long.

Scorsese’s film, based on David Grann’s best-selling nonfiction book (the director co-wrote the screenplay with Oscar winner Eric Roth), sketches out the backstory with a few energetic strokes, plunging viewers into the turbulent, oil-fueled life of Osage County. It is full of all kinds of adventurers, scammers and simply seekers of a better life, every day getting off the train in the hope of getting rich quickly. One of these new arrivals is Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has just been commissioned from the First World War (he served, however, as a cook in the rear). Ernest’s uncle William Hale lives in Osage, suggesting that they easily call him the King (Robert De Niro). A wealthy cattle dealer who demonstratively shuns the oil business, he truly considers himself the king of these places, and this unofficial title is recognized by everyone: from the sheriff to the Indians. Hale calls himself their friend and emphasizes how much good he has done for them.

Perhaps the main feature of Ernest is the absence of any distinctive features. Thought processes, even the simplest ones, are given to him with obvious difficulty, and he is completely deprived of his own will, floating through life like a chip driven by the current. But his uncle has very specific plans for him: he invites (or rather orders) his nephew to marry an Indian woman, whose family owns oil shares, so that these rights, and with them the money, will pass to him. His choice falls on the stately beauty Molly (Lily Gladstone), who shows obvious sympathy for Ernest from their first, not entirely accidental meeting. Soon the young people get married, have children, and the marriage seems quite prosperous. But Molly’s sisters, and then her mother, die one after another, and with them many members of the tribe – from reasons that are sometimes natural, sometimes not so, and sometimes not at all established. As the number of deaths increases, the Osages hire private detectives and send messengers to Washington with pleas for a fair investigation, but they suffer the same fate.

Initially, the central line of “The Killers…” was supposed to be the investigation, and the main character was the newly formed FBI agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons played him instead of DiCaprio, who preferred the role of Ernest). However, after carefully studying the materials, Scorsese and his co-authors shifted the focus of the film to the tragedy of the Osage, for the first time giving a voice to the victims and survivors, who are represented by the quiet but unbending dignity of Molly, and turning the belated heroes of the badge and the pistol into a kind of Greek chorus.

As a result, “The Killers…” has grown into a truly epic canvas, the scale of which is clearly visible on the screen, but the film was shot and edited with such youthful energy and surgical precision in every detail that the 200-minute running time is not felt at all when watching. The tape then opens up to an endless prairie, in which the traditions and rituals of the Osage are still alive, gradually dying before our eyes along with their bearers. Then it narrows down to intimate pictures of home life, increasingly imbued with a sense of inevitable catastrophe as the action progresses.

This is a story about the origins of modern America, which grew up on blood and dirt, which Scorsese approached in “Gangs of New York” (2002), but the interference of producer Harvey Weinstein’s bad memory did not allow him to fully realize his plan. This is also a gangster saga, telling, like Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995) or The Irishman (2019), about the corruption of the soul that turns seemingly ordinary people into accomplices in heinous crimes. But this is also the story of a strange, seemingly impossible love between two seemingly completely incompatible people, one of whom is really slowly killing her, never fully realizing his actions. In the last third, the picture turns into a completely predictable, but still striking in its outcome, legal drama. Only the merciless verdict on both the characters, and everything that they represent, and on the audience, who perhaps watched the film with a false sense of moral superiority (that was a long time ago, but we are not like that), is passed not by honorable lawyers in three-piece suits, but by the authors themselves .