To the end, the festival hoped to include this film event in the race for the Palme d’Or, which cinema legend Scorsese had already won in 1976 for “Taxi Driver”.
However, this Apple TV-produced feature film, which hits theaters in October and sees Martin Scorsese bring together his two favorite actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro for the first time, finally screened out of competition on Saturday.
It’s time to let others go first! reports the director interviewed by AFP the day after a triumphant rise with his actors and a warm reception of the film by international critics.
“I have to go, young people are waiting there,” he continues. I like golden trophies. “I love her,” admits the director, who won the Oscar for best picture in 2007 for “Troubled Agents” (Departed among the Departments) and “Golden Lion of Honor” in Venice in 1995, but remained relative given the extent of his film career unrewarded.
“Now I’m focused on time, energy and inspiration, that’s the most important thing. »
– A quote from Martin Scorsese
Killers of the Flower Moon takes up classic Scorsese themes: a tale of violence, crime and love, but it’s also perhaps one of the filmmaker’s most political films. It describes how white people robbed members of an indigenous people, the Osages, on whose land oil was found in the 1920s. This scenario is based on true events.
These are problematic issues that still plague the United States a century later, he insists, although this is not a film with a message that appeals only to the convinced.
The way the Aborigines were treated remains a wound to be healed, notes Martin Scorsese, and perhaps the way things are presented will make it possible to understand them.
The female lead is played by Blackfeet Nation actress Lily Gladstone, and many supporting roles are played by the Osages, on whose estate the film was shot.
Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio posed for photographers on the Croisette.
Photo: Getty Images/Andreas Rentz
We can also hear De Niro and DiCaprio giving up English at times to speak the language of these people. By knowing our history and understanding where we are, maybe we can help change things and live up to what we want our country to be, Scorsese hopes.
The country is still young, still suffering from its youthful wounds. This film is one way to see that, he continues. Let’s just show the story and see what happens.
He himself acknowledges the importance that cinema had for his cosmopolitanism: “I come from a time, in the USA in the 1950s, when certain things could only be said when a new generation of filmmakers came along and took up these topics”. , he explained.
I was born into an immigrant family [d’origine italienne] where there were no books. I found my first information on the street, then in cinemas, then films led me to music and books …
Scorsese says he’s long dreamed of directing a Western, a genre his latest film explores by exploring the sides of Good with his cowboy, who comes to town to play a deeply gritty role and evil swapped.
I like the codes of the western, the style. I got very excited when I saw horses. But I was afraid to approach him! he jokes.
Just one regret? The film is set during Prohibition in a state where the consumption of alcohol was forbidden by law: I always imagined going to a saloon or a bar. I could have made big scenes [à ces endroits]. But that didn’t exist back then.
De Niro compares his character to Trump
Robert De Niro couldn’t help but smack former US President Donald Trump.
Photo: Getty Images/Mohammed Badra
Robert De Niro tried Sunday but couldn’t help but mention the name of Donald Trump, which he compared during a news conference to the Machiavellian character he plays in the movie Killers of the Flower Moon.
In this feature film, 79-year-old actor William Hale, nicknamed King, plays a black gold businessman who hatches a horrific plan to rob the Osages of their oil revenues.
“I don’t understand much about him, why he betrays her…” explained the legendary Scorsese actor, who forged a bond of trust with the Osages before orchestrating dozens of murders.
“But we understood that a lot better after the death of George Floyd, with this systematic racism, and that’s what this is about,” De Niro added, referring to the 2020 death of this African American man in Minneapolis, who was suffocating from the Police officer’s knee died.
It is the banality of evil that we must be wary of. “We all know who I’m going to talk about, I won’t say his name,” promised the unforgettable Taxi Driver interpreter.
But a few minutes later, De Niro, the former American president’s notorious opponent, couldn’t hold back:
“It’s like Trump, I had to say. There are people who think he can do a good job. Imagine how crazy that is. »
– A quote from Robert De Niro
Deaf violence, reckoning and betrayal: Presenting its world premiere on the Croisette, Killers of the Flower Moon transports the universe of Martin Scorsese’s greatest films to the dusty lands of this indigenous nation at the beginning of the 20th century.
With a sumptuous realization worthy of the pharaonic budget of $200 million and its polished imagery, this fresco takes the time (3 hours 26) to highlight, murder after murder, the colonial and racist dynamics that persist in the United States. United in the 20th century.