Killers of the Flower Moon is a strange beast.
On the one hand, it offers an unsparing portrait of institutional evil - both in terms of deliberate action (the titular killers) and the authorities who ignored the murders for far too long.
On the other hand, it feels like half of a story - one in which the ‘killers’ take up the frame. That would not matter except that the movie wants us to empathise with Mollie, and she feels sidelined.
The movie seems to recognise the limits of its framing.
The film is bookended by the remediation of history through a white lens - we open with a silent film showing the Osage’s prosperity,and we end with a radio programme decades later telling the fates of all the participants.
Acknowledging his own position as another of these white creators telling this story, Scorsese himself appears as the final performer, to hammer home the way this story is still being framed through a white gaze.
At one level it is a level of self-awareness, and a punchline to a film all about the ways in which white institutions collaborated to destroy the Osage.
Mollie’s (Lily Gladstone) story is the communal nightmare reduced to one person - she spends the film entrusting herself and her family to people whose sole motive is to kill her and steal her inheritance.
DiCaprio’s Ernest is the opposite of an active protagonist. The film watches as the good-looking white man allows himself to be manipulated by his uncle.
As the film progresses, he reveals himself as the essence of the banality of evil - every time he is confronted with the horror of what he has done, he reacts with horror - but he never acts.
Every time he is presented with a fork in the road, he stays. Is he comfortable, greedy, terrified of defying his uncle?
He is not a pure evil - he is, as the film foregrounds, depressingly human.
Molly is not saved by herself or her husband - but by the long-delayed arrival of the authorities.
There is not much to the FBI’s investigation - most of their case is put together after a previously-unknown character decides to spill the beans.
They work hand in hand with a local insurance company, who are only interested in an indigenous man’s death because it will affect their bottom line.
One can see a more conventional version of this story (one in which Ernest turns against his uncle and fights for his wife and community, or one in which Jessi Plemons’ Thomas Bruce White Sr. and his team diligently track down DeNiro’s Hill) and the film takes a grim, unrelenting approach to this shadow film, setting up and knocking down any assumptions the (white?) audience might hold.
This is a film about undoing American myths, about Whiteness, masculinity, and the remediation of these myths.
DiCaprio’s casting is key - his physical attractiveness in the film is part of the reason he is not a suspect for so long
Molly even remarks on his good looks when her sisters interrogate his intentions towards her.
DeNiro’s ‘King’ Hill is not a man of the future - with his scheme to marry his sons and goons into the Osage, he is more like a feudal lord, using all means of violence, diplomacy and seduction to secure his kingdom and dynasty.
Before the conspiracy is foregrounded, the film is filled with portents of doom:
Reference is made to the Tulsa massacre - Hill is shown watching a newsreel of the damage.
There is also a scene in which the KKK March through town, led by Osage women. There is an implication to the Tulsa reference, made explicit in this scene, that the Osage are living side-by-side with a white supremacy that is happy to co-exist beside them while stabbing them collectively in the back.
This movie has a sense of history, and a quiet despair about its history, that is fascinating.
But it almost feels like I am watching half of a longer story - like Eastwood’s double epic on the different sides of the Iwo Jima campaign (Flags of Our Fathers and Sands of Iwo Jima).
Part of it has to do with Ernest and Molly’s story.
I am not a DiCaprio fan; I have never had strong feelings about him.
I never feel that compelled by him - the one time I was full invested was Wolf of Wall Street, where he is playing someone forcing a confident bluster, and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, where he is playing the inverse - a man unable to maintain a front, nay a man fearing the limits of his own talent to perform.
Ernest should fit, and for the most part I think he works - but there is something missing. And that something extends to the rest of the movie.
We watch Ernst and Mollie get together, live together, and her gradual deterioration under his watch, but there is something missing. I never really understood her love for him.
There is something laudable about how unflinching Scorsese’s camera is. But I left the film vaguely empty - it felt like something was missing.
I have seen critiques of the film, particularly from an Osage perspective.
I will not pretend that my POV is the same, but I cannot help feeling a missing interiority.
While Ernest’s actions speak loudly about his character, there was a lack of substance to the relationship he had with Mollie.
Despite Mollie being so central to the story, she often feels like a remote figure that the film orbits around. We see her attraction to Ernst and the horrors she has to endure, but it felt like she was never the subject.
The film never seems aligned with her perspective. It feels like the film is more horrified by King and Ernest’s actions, than in touch with the people they impacted.
A genuinely devastating piece of work, and with its epic three hour runtime, it never feels bloated or listless. Maybe I need a couple of more viewings, but there is something left in this story, and its telling, that feels obscured.
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