“There Was No Mention of the Murders”: Killers of the Flower Moon review

        It's hard to recommend a film well over 3 hours long, but with Killers of the Flower Moon, the extensive plotting just makes its poignant message all the more clear. It's a rare honest film about America's past.

        Killers of the Flower Moon revolves around the Osage, a chosen people by chance. On Osage land lay more than three dozen oil fields. According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, more than 300 million barrels of crude oil was pumped from these fields between 1901 and 1930. A billion barrels had been produced by 1969. This oil made them some of the richest people per capita.

        Scorsese regular Robert De Niro stars as William King Hale, a white man posing as a philanthropist on Osage land. Beneath his surface as a benefactor, Hale launches covert contract killings against rich members of the Osage nation. His nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), stands by while his father's killings continue, to the detriment of his own family. These murders of at least 60 were documented with literary talent by David Grann for his 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon, inspiring Martin Scorsese to direct a film adaptation.

        Scorsese exercises patience in allowing Ernest and Molly to see the world around them burn before reaching a boiling point. To watch Killers of the Flower Moon is to watch Ernest tolerate his uncle's crimes, while Ernest’s wife Mollie (Lily Gladstone) slowly suffers from his complicity.

        While Scorsese often utilizes popular music, the 1920s setting limits incidental music to early blues played over antique radios. The real star of its sonic landscape is Robbie Robertson's score, full of ambient Western compositions that wouldn't be out of place if sampled in a Quentin Tarantino film. This music plays across the film's landscapes, ranging from expansive oil fields to quaint houses. The indoor sets call to mind immersive museum halls. 

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        In his 1967 review of Who's That Knocking at My Door, film critic Roger Ebert cites Scorsese's use of music and motion as reasons he believes he was on the rise to become a great director. He continues this tradition in Killers of the Flower Moon, utilizing tracking shots to portray the movements of many Osage characters at once, and employs aerial shots to depict the wide open fields of Osage land.

        Leonardo DiCaprio has experience playing despicable characters (The Wolf of Wall Street, Django Unchained), and while this may not be his most evil, it's certainly his most unbecoming. Scorsese has dealt with greed before, but there's always some kind of celebratory aspect to it. Here, greed is downright dismal. It's an abject horror released not only upon families, but upon an entire community that was once the richest in the world.

        Sandwiched between two A-listers is Lily Gladstone, who seems to experience every emotion as Ernest's wife Mollie. Scorsese remains a master of character development. Mollie's relationship with Ernest completely disintegrates over the three-hour runtime, and Gladstone is perfect in every phase of the film. In one scene, Molly, riding in an automobile with Ernest, says something in the Osage language, to which he responds "I don't know what you just said, but it better be Indian for handsome devil". Gladstone's laughter seemed so genuine that the whole theater laughed along with her.

        Thirty three years ago, Scorsese's film Goodfellas lost the Best Picture Oscar to Dances with Wolves, which is upsetting not only because Goodfellas was the more impactful film, but also because of how trite Dances with Wolves is. It follows a white Union soldier who assimilates into the Sioux nation, and ends up protecting them from both their rival Pawnee tribe and American settlers. This is a completely a historical account of what happened between Native Americans and belligerent settlers. None of this is present in Killers of the Flower Moon, a perfectly unromantic look at colonial evil.

        The Osage murders, a deed of genocide, had been all but forgotten. Upon reading David Grann's book, Martin Scorsese says he felt the need to share the story. The book is a great read, but its prose is encyclopedic. The film is more subjective, and all the more horrifying for it.