On Saturday, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’, Martin Scorsese’s harrowing epic about one of America’s favorite pastimes – mass murder – premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was screened out of competition. It is Scorsese’s first film at the event since the release of his nightmarish screwball After Hours in 1986, which earned him the Best Director award. For this issue, he walked the red carpet with the two stars who have shaped opposite halves of his career: Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Based on the non-fiction bestseller of the same name by David Grann – the screenplay was by Scorsese and Eric Roth – the film tells of the murders of several oil-rich members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Grann’s book is subtitled The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, while the film focuses primarily on what happened on the ground in Oklahoma. While the young office manager’s name, J. Edgar Hoover, is mentioned, most of it relates to the agency’s future, its authority, scandals, and the time when DiCaprio was in Clint Eastwood’s “J.” Edgar” (2011).
Shockingly, at times crushingly sad, Killers of the Flower Moon is a real crime thriller that’s more like a horror movie due to its chilling details. And while Scorsese focuses on a murder spree in the 1920s, he also powerfully tells a larger story about power, Native Americans and the United States. A crucial part of this story played out in the 1870s when the American government forced the Osage to leave Kansas and settle in the Southwest. Another chapter was written a few decades later when oil was discovered on Osage land in modern-day Oklahoma.
When DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart arrives by train at Osage-Boomtown Fairfax, oil derricks crowd the bright green plains as far as the eye can see. Still wearing his dark brown Doughboy uniform from the recently ended war, Ernest now lives with his uncle William Hale (Robert DeNiro) and a group of other relatives, including his brother (Scott Shepherd). The real Hale, a rancher with owlish glasses and a thin smile, had cultivated such close ties with the local Indian population that he was revered, Grann writes, “as the king of the Osage Hills.”
With sharp efficiency, cameras flying high, and just enough story to bolster the narrative, Scorsese plunges you into the heart of the tumult of a region teeming with new money that some are spending and others trying to steal. The Osage owned the mineral rights to their land, which was among the largest oil deposits in the country, and leased it to prospectors. By the early 20th century, Grann writes, every person on the tribal list began receiving payouts. The Osage became incredibly wealthy, and in 1923, he adds, “the tribe made more than $30 million, which is more than $400 million today.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” revolves around Ernest’s relationship with Hale and a young Osage woman, Mollie (Lily Gladstone), whom he meets while rolling the townsfolk around. Much like in Fairfax, where luxury cars speed down the main dirt road among screaming people and frightened horses, Ernest is soon hopping up frantically, with a wild smile and bubbling enthusiasm. He keeps bouncing – it’s like wealth has given him a hookup – but his energy changes after he meets Mollie. They marry, have children, and find refuge together as the Osage dead begins to pile up.
Gladstone and DiCaprio are a compelling match, even if their characters have different vibes, temperaments, and body types. When out and about, this peaceful, reserved woman transforms her face into an impassive mask, wrapping a long traditional blanket around her and enveloping her body with it. With her beauty, stillness and sly Mona Lisa smile, Mollie exerts a great attraction on Ernest and the viewer; You both fall in love quickly. DiCaprio will draw most of the attention, but without Gladstone, the film wouldn’t have the same slow-building, soul-heavy emotional impact.
Ernest is an intriguing, thorny character, especially in the age of Marvel Manichaeism, and he’s torn by contradictions he seems barely aware of. DiCaprio’s performance is initially characterized by Ernest’s eagerness to please Hale – his heist and sweating are full of comedy and pathos – but grows quieter, more inward, and delicately complex as the mystery deepens. It’s revealing that Ernest frowns when you first see him. That facial expression takes on meaning when you consider DiCaprio mirrors De Niro’s famous grimace, a choice that draws a visual boundary between the characters and the men who were Scorsese’s twins, cinematic guiding stars.
I’ll have more to say about Killers of the Flower Moon when it opens in American theaters in October.