When Zane Lowe interviewedMartin ScorseseforApple Music, he asked whetherKillers of the Flower Moonwas his “most important” film yet. In the peacefully self-assured manner that we’ve come to expect from Scorsese, he answered by gently challenging the question: “Art should be important all the time.”
The simple idea that all art should be important appears to have driven Scorsese’s career in film up to this point. Through his work with The Film Foundation, he has preserved and rescued 58 films from 30 different countries that would have been lost to history if it wasn’t for his intervention. He’s also helped to provide a free educational curriculum to over 10 million young people, teaching them about film language and history.
Even if he had never made a film of his own, Martin Scorsese would have made an indelible imprint on the history of cinema. All of that said,Killers of the Flower Mooncertainly feels like it carries a certain importance all of its own.
The True Story Behind Killers of the Flower Moon
Based on David Grann’s 2017 bestseller,Killers of the Flower Moontells the story of the Osage Nation, which existed as an outlier in early 20th-century Oklahoma. The Osage were the richest people per capita in the world at the time, owing to the discovery of oil on their land. In the post-colonial United States of America, this was a rare situation where the wealth and power of a locale were controlled by Native Americans rather than white Americans.
The Osage became unwitting targets of a gang of brutal fortune hunters. The Osage people lost everything in a number of different ways, some extremely violent, and some subtle and manipulative. Thestory thatKillers of the Flower Moonfocuses onis perhaps one of the most unsettling.
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A series of murders that targeted the Osage people who owned extremely valuable oil rights were perpetrated mostly by white men. They would befriend Osage women with the intent of marrying them, and then once the women had died from unnatural causes, they would inherit or steal their oil rights. Many of the perpetrators got away with it due to systemic failures in the justice system that investigated the murders.
Martin Scorsese and the Pursuit of Power
Like many of Scorsese’s films,Killers of the Flower Moonhas a fascination with the vulnerability of power structures. The person who’s in power isn’t usually the one who interests Scorsese — Henry Hill inGoodfellasis fascinating because he is doing anything he can to gain something from the outskirts of the mob he always wanted to be a part of. InThe Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort’s only redeeming quality is that he’s on the bottom rung, taking on the behemoth of corporate America. WithKillers of the Flower Moon, it’s Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his conniving uncle William (Robert De Niro) plotting to climb into power.
In order for Ernest and William to take the wealth and power of the Osage people, they infiltrate them by marriage. The most heartbreaking part of the con is that Mollie (Lily Gladstone) is unknowingly at the center of a grand scheme that her own personal downfall is only a small part of — she is Ernest’s way in. Through her story, though, we learn of the spirituality that was inherent in the Osage people, and just how shallow the people who replaced them were.Killers of the Flower Moonis a record of not only what the Osage people lost, but what the world has lost to this particular pursuit of power.
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Scorsese sprinkled several cameos across the three-and-a-half-hour movie that added to the story, making it increasingly entertaining by the minute.
Why Killers of the Flower Moon Stands Apart from Scorsese’s Other Work
Anongoing debate about Scorsese’s workis the extent to which his films glorify violence and immorality.Goodfellasis an exploration of evil that makes it easy for us to become absorbed in it — the allure of the criminal lifestyle is presented with little empathy for its victims, only for its consequences.The Wolf of Wall Streethas met a fair amount of criticism for glorifying a protagonist who treats women as toys, defrauds clients, and then gets away with it all.
Killers of the Flower Moonis different because it has to be. The story of Ernest and William’s pursuit of power is impossible to tell in a forgiving light. They aren’t outsiders like Henry Hill or Jordan Belfort, they’re members of an existing power structure who are willing to go to brutal lengths to add to it.
The real-life consequence of the actions of people like Ernest and William is that the Osage people had almost lost their history. Along with their wealth and power, their land and resources were taken with just as little regard for them as people as their culture and stories.Killers of the Flower Moonis Scorsese’s attempt to restore some of what was taken away, and while the story is driven by a common interest in the director’s work, it becomes separate because it carries a purpose that is far more transcendent.
