Pan and Slam

Killers of the Flower Moon

R 3h 26m

• Director
  • Martin Scorsese
• Writers
  • Eric Roth
  • Martin Scorsese
  • David Grann
• Stars
  • Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Robert De Niro
  • Lily Gladstone

By Jason Koenigsberg

For over fifty years Martin Scorsese has been a revolutionary force in cinema as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. I for one have always been his biggest champion and long stated that he never made a bad movie, until now. Killers of the Flower Moon is so unconventional to the point where it hindered the movies emotional impact and had such an intentionally anticlimactic final act. The fact that so much talent in front of and behind the camera missed the mark on this story is pitiful. Killers of the Flower Moon is based off a candid novel that unearthed of one of the darkest secrets and most shameful coverups in American history. The book is a scathing indictment of our blatantly racist past. This should have been an easy lay up for Martin Scorsese directing his two muses Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro for the first time, they acted together in 1993 in This Boy’s Life and 1996 in Marvin’s Room but Scorsese did not direct either of those films. Instead Killers of the Flower Moon is a rare cinematic event, an unsatisfying Scorsese picture that does not feel whole. It feels like he was the wrong man to direct it and that is a sentence I never thought I would type but in this instance it is the truth.

The movie opens up with hands holding a peace pipe raised towards the sky. We meet the Osage Native Americans and the movie very briefly with 1920s style newsreel footage catches the audience up on their situation living in Oklahoma. They were kicked out and forced onto that land only years later to discover that they were displaced by the US government onto land filled with oil. So the Osage in a short amount of time have become some of the wealthiest people in the world. However they do need a sponsor, meaning a white person, to help them use their money. Soon a lot of these rich Native Americans start mysteriously dying and there are little to no investigations. This is all much better explained and in more detail in the gripping true crime mystery novel the film is based on by David Grann. All of these aspects are hinted at but never blatantly illustrated in the movie with a few throwaway lines of dialogue. For someone who has not read the book, Killers of the Flower Moon may feel like they are thrust into a story without knowing key background elements. Considering the three and a half hour running time that is really unforgivable. One can understand Scorsese not wanting to make a film with conventional narrative or in a linear manner but with this much time the audience deserves a clearer introduction and certainly a more profound resolution. It could have used some of the narration like Scorsese used in his film Goodfellas (1990) to bring the viewer up to speed and clarify aspects of the Osage and the white people who settled in Oklahoma. Even the lazy trope of scrolling text on screen would have helped. There is nothing wrong with making movies in a more sophisticated manner and not spoon-feeding audiences every detail, but once again with that incredibly long runtime there is no excuse for not helping audiences understand this overlooked dark chapter in American history. His usual editor Thelma Schoonmaker allegedly had to cut an extra hour or so to get it down to this version released in theaters, sadly, she should have cut out about an hour more.

But Killers of the Flower Moon is not without its merits. The cinematography of the Oklahoma plains is beautiful as expected. This is the closest Scorsese has come to directing a western, or a least a movie in a typical western setting and not an urban setting and it does contain lush colors and gorgeous tones throughout in all of its dark and bright scenes. Two out of the three lead performances are outstanding for the most part. Leonardo DiCaprio continues to be one of the most unselfish movie stars of all time. He handles his scenes with a generous demeanor that few actors share and he makes any actor that shares the screen with him look better. Go back and revisit some of his best films like The Departed (2006) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and watch DiCaprio more closely in them to see what a truly giving actor he is. To quote Brad Pitt in his Oscar acceptance speech for the latter, “Leo, I’ll ride your coattails any day”. DiCaprio’s talent enhances the films leading female performance from Lily Gladstone, an Osage woman with a lot of money who marries DiCaprio and sees her family beset by tragic events as her tribespeople and all of her family members start dying. Ms. Gladstone is relatively unknown compared to the other big names above the title but she holds her own with the A-listers. This is a rock solid performance of subtlety and immense pain and she conveys her characters suffering and naiveté perfectly. One might wish she was given more to do in the middle of the movie than lie in bed and act sick. Come awards season her name will be touted around and she will likely win or at least be nominated for a lot of Best Actress awards and she will deserve it. Despite any criticisms or flaws with Killers of the Flower Moon they have nothing to do with her and Lily Gladstone is remarkable as the heart of the film. Robert De Niro’s character is just a smarmy snake oil salesman and we know from the moment we meet his he is out to hurt these Native Americans and get all of their money. His character never really changes or has an arc and any other actor could have played this role. It was nice to see DiCaprio and De Niro share the screen under Scorsese’s direction since his legacy will forever be tied to those two actors and they both owe him a lot of credit for their long and successful careers as well. Also Jesse Plemons and recent Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser have smaller but memorable scenes as well and an investigator and attorney respectively.

Scorsese even throws in partial social commentary about our healthcare system when Lily Gladstone’s character needs insulin for her diabetes and the white doctors explain to her how expensive it is and how lucky she is to have this medicine at her disposal. There are other more blatant moments of social commentary especially with its bizarre ending involving a radio show but most of them did not stick out as well as they should have. There is no doubt that Martin Scorsese made Killers of the Flower Moon exactly in his vision, this is just the first time that his vision did not measure up to something gratifying.

Even if you understand why Scorsese chose to direct this film as atypical as he did, it lacked the dramatic gravitas whereas if it went the traditional route like other true stories about attempted genocide and the descendants of those that survived. By seeing their faces and hearing their own testimonies the climax would have been significantly more powerful like the final scenes of Schindler’s List (1993) and Rabbit Proof Fence (2002). Obviously Scorsese is never one to do what has already been done and he is unafraid to make his big budget productions inaccessible to mainstream audiences but Killers of the Flower Moon is so unorthodox even as it dragged on, the rushed finale made me wishing he cut an hour of the second act out and replaced it with scenes that are talked about but never shown. Movies should be intellectually stimulating and Martin Scorsese has made some of the most cerebral and mature motion pictures of all time. His resume is a list of classic movies and none of them ever felt like a chore to sit through. Killers of the Flower Moon is the only film he has directed that felt like tedious busy work that one does not get much gratification out of once it is completed.

Instead of sitting through three and a half hours of Killers of the Flower Moon check out Wind River (2017) a much more compelling and shorter movie about the injustices Native Americans face more recently from our government and criminal justice systems lack of empathy towards people that are not white. Check out my review of that movie here https://panandslam.com/2017/09/09/modern-western-wind-river-is-a-smart-social-commentary-and-murder-mystery/ and watch the preview below.