So I Watched Killers of the Flower Moon

I kind of love Martin Scorsese. The Irishman is one of my favorite films, and even if I haven't seen a lot of what some might consider to be the "essential" entries in his filmography (among them Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. OK, you can shoot me now), when I say that I love Martin Scorsese, what I mean is that I obviously love the films of his that I have seen, but to take it further, I love his tendencies as a director. The age of grounded and historical epics has largely gone the way of the dinosaur, destroyed by a meteor comprised of superhero movies and horrid attention spans. No more Schindler's Lists. No more Godfathers. We don't often get to see big-budget movies that have to deal with anything except fantasy and science fiction. And while this new landscape for filmmaking (read: MCU) isn't quite the horrible Antichrist that a lot of cinephiles make it out to be, it's not ideal, and Scorsese's films are, in a lot of ways, a throwback to a purer era of Hollywood, an era where most big blockbusters still managed to have a distinct voice and vision. And so when I saw that Scorsese was making a film adaptation of David Grann's "Killers of the Flower Moon," I was head-over-heels in love from the moment I saw the trailer. I had heard a little bit about the Osage murders, being interested in American history growing up and all, but the more I read about what actually happened, the more interested I became in going to see this movie. Disclaimer: I did not go to the theater to see Killers of the Flower Moon when it first debuted, opting instead to work on my classwork like a somewhat responsible human being, and I was remarkably disappointed when I saw that the film would be streaming on Apple TV, a service that I didn't and don't personally have. And so, when I found out that some, uh, questionably ethical and legal distributors were showing Killers of the Flower Moon, I didn't ask too many questions. If studios really want to solve the issue of bootlegging, then they will address the well-documented streaming rights travesty. So I Jack-Sparrowed the film, and now that I've finished it, I want to give my thoughts on it. For the short answer, Killers of the Flower Moon is a really good movie, a worthy nominee for Best Picture at the Oscars, and a movie that made me glad that I have a good attention span because I'm going to shoot you straight: this film's pacing and runtime tested even me, someone who watches a lot of movies. It's not a film that you watch casually. When I say that I'm going to watch Killers of the Flower Moon, it means that I am making an intentional choice and not just throwing something on in the background while I do work or something. But enough words from me trying to make this article longer: let's get into the actual review.

Killers of the Flower Moon is an adaptation of David Grann's nonfiction book of the same name, and it follows a white man named Ernest Burkhart who marries Mollie Kyle, a woman of the Osage people, a Native American tribe who became obscenely rich when they found oil on their federal reservation. Money talks, and when outsiders begin murdering Osage Indians one by one in the hopes of getting their hands on the oil, Ernest is caught between his loyalty to Mollie and the Osage and his loyalty to his Uncle Hale and the white man.

It probably doesn't need to be said if you've seen some of Scorsese's other epics, primarily The Irishman, but the production design in Scorsese's newest historical epic is absolutely insane. Killers of the Flower Moon captures a really interesting aesthetic, mixing the look of the Classic Western and the look of a contemporary film set in the 1920s while also incorporating some appropriate Native American imagery, all set against the drop-dead gorgeous backdrop of the Oklahoma prairies. Not only does the film look appropriate for the time period, it also feels fresh. It's a hybrid in the best sense of the word, and I don't think that it's too far a stretch for me to say that truly original filmmaking should often start with a truly original backdrop to set the film apart from its more contemporary counterparts, and Killers of the Flower Moon did this for me in a really effective way. It looks like the Roaring 20s and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had a kid of their own (maybe I didn't think that metaphor through as well as I should have), and frankly, even writing about it almost makes me want to go back and at least partially rewatch this film because it's visually very attractive and unique, and it's not just blowing hot air either: Scorsese and Co. obviously cared a lot about the look of this film, and with a budget of $200 million, they spared no expense in bringing 1920's Oklahoma to glorious life in a way that feels authentic and right rather than merely cool. Some excellent, if relatively straightforward, cinematography by DP Rodrigo Prieto is the icing on this massive cake of a movie. And when you combine all of these elements to make something special like Killers of the Flower Moon and then place it next to films like its Oscar rival Oppenheimer and other historical epics like The Irishman, Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front, Ridley Scott's Napoleon, or Scott's upcoming Gladiator II, it makes me wonder if the historical epic is making a comeback as a genre. I certainly don't have any complaints about the idea, especially not if these theoretical films can maintain the same quality in both their storytelling and their visuals as a picture like Killers of the Flower Moon did.

Some of the promotional material for this film hailed Leonardo Dicaprio's portrayal of Ernest Burkhart as the best performance of his career, and for once, I don't think that the makers of this film were embellishing. Dicaprio delivered a tour de force that was rewarded with perhaps the most egregious Oscar nomination snub I've ever seen. At least Lily Gladstone was nominated for best actress, and even though she didn't win, both actors absolutely deserved to get some recognition, because the acting in this movie is simply unbelievable. People like to talk about Gladstone's portrayal of Mollie in this movie, and while it's true that it is wonderful, the best performance in the film is that of Dicaprio's Ernest Burkhart, and it's not really close. Dicaprio brings Ernest's tragic, deceitful, and conflicted journey to glorious life, and I know it's probably said too often when talking about good performances, but Dicaprio truly disappeared into the role. The tug-of-war for his heart and soul between his wife Mollie and his uncle Hale was nothing short of spectacular, and the emotional stakes that this movie raised regarding his relationships felt painfully legitimate because, in some ways, they were, given this film's real-life source material. Much like The Irishman, Scorsese expertly grounds a massive narrative by intimately and intentionally focusing on the personal lives and struggles of the people who are a part of it, and sticks to the adage that good movies are less about what happens around the characters (people) involved, and more about what happens to the characters (people) involved.

As far as the plot of the film goes, it's intriguing and very real stuff. It's a story about trust, mistrust, betrayal, and murder on the very grandest of scales with the most intimate of scopes. Overall, I found the pacing of the film to be a win. Initially, some of the earliest murders in the film almost seem to be an afterthought, but over time, it became apparent to me that this was just a reflection of the public willfully ignoring what was going on in Osage territory. The movie could have benefited from cutting about a half hour in total from various segments of its runtime, but all in all, the actual story Killers of the Flower Moon tells is remarkable, even if it's not perfect, and if modern filmmakers aspired to make films like it, films that are actually trying to be familiar yet original as well as self-sustaining works of art, I think that Hollywood would be in a much better place than it currently is. This movie got something of a bad rap from certain audiences for its length, as well as for Scorsese's comments about Marvel as a franchise, so I want to balance the scales and be a little scathing here to the people who gave this movie a mere 3.1 stars on Google reviews: Marvel diehards need to stop review-bombing a movie that they obviously haven't even seen because they don't have the attention span required to sit through the whole thing. Sure, Killers is a long movie, but it's an objectively great film, and it's kind of discouraging to see films like this get middle-of-the-road or even negative reactions from audiences. Now, to do a 180 and criticize naysayers of the film who aren't in the Marvel camp: we complain that good movies aren't made anymore, and then whine whenever someone makes a movie different from (read: longer than) the regular fare. In 40 years, people are probably going to unanimously hail Killers of the Flower Moon as a masterpiece, and I want to jump on that bandwagon before it becomes popular, because this movie deserves every bit of that title, and when a lot of the Osage-related guilt-baiting by journalists that arose in the wake of the film's release starts to wear down, I think that we will be able to look back with a healthier and more appropriately somber gaze on a chapter of American history that is truly tragic. I think that, for future generations, we can pass down a question this movie raised that can, sadly, be applied to just about every situation throughout human history:

Can you find the wolves in this picture?

Killers of the Flower Moon - 9/10

Proverbs 15:27