Best reasons to see Scorsese’s new picture? De Niro, DiCaprio, and Gladstone
Much has been made of the length of director Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which clocks in at three hours and 26 minutes. But give the guy some credit: his previous film, 2019’s much lauded The Irishman, ran three hours and 29 minutes. So he’s heard you, and has let you out of your seat a full three minutes earlier this time. What a guy! But seriously–while a few scenes do feel like they could be trimmed, others you’ll wish you could dwell in longer. For the most part, then, the run time becomes a non-issue. The story is so well told that you’ll remain fully engaged throughout the majority of this sobering but absorbing picture.
Based on David Grann’s acclaimed 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, Scorsese, who co-wrote the screenplay with award-winning screenwriter Eric Roth, dramatizes an appalling true tale of American hubris, greed, and destruction. The story concerns the brazen murders of members of the Osage nation in Oklahoma in the early 1920s, who were killed for their headrights–the royalties they and their heirs receive for the vast amounts of oil found on their sovereign land. At one point, the Osage were the wealthiest people on the planet per capita. The newly formed FBI, then known as simply the Bureau of Investigation, finally took note of the startling number of murders and began an investigation, much to the anger of the perpetrators.
If you’re not familiar with the book or how the investigation turns out, I won’t reveal more detail here. Instead, I encourage you to go see the film, which does a stellar job of unspooling the outrage-inducing plot and its consequences. The film’s great strengths include its principal cast, its historically accurate set design, and its starkly beautiful cinematography from Rodrigo Prieto, Scorsese’s Academy Award nominated Irishman cinematographer.
Heavyweights Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio star as wealthy landowner William Hale and his nephew Ernest Burkhart, respectively, and both are sensational. De Niro has never been more sociopathic or chilling–Travis Bickle might even back away from him. And DiCaprio does wonders with the complex role of an easily manipulated, none too bright World War I vet who falls prey to his Uncle’s machinations without fully understanding their ramifications on his relationship with his wife Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and children. If De Niro’s remorseless Hale is pure evil incarnate, DiCaprio’s dim Ernest is evil by association. We’re left wondering if Ernest’s life may have taken a different path had he never returned home to the clutches of his Uncle. A jailhouse tete-a-tete between the two yields the sort of jaw-dropping master class acting that is bound to be replayed for years in award show film montages.
Gladstone, in her first major role since appearing in a number of fine indies (Fancy Dance; The Unknown Country; Certain Women; Walking Out) more than holds her own with her megawatt co-stars, and is sure to be nominated for a slew of awards. In smaller but no less important roles, Jesse Plemons, as Bureau of Investigation agent Tom White, John Lithgow as prosecutor Peter Leaward, and Tantoo Cardinal as Mollie’s mother Lizzie Q create characters just as richly drawn as those of the three main players.
Scorsese does make a few missteps, but they’re not enough to discourage you from seeing the film. Several times he intercuts black and white photo stills from the time period, which actually pull us out of the action instead of more into it. Scorsese’s creating a dramatic narrative, not a Ken Burns-type documentary, so these interludes feel out of place with the unfolding dramatization. And the ending, a strange and unnecessary coda, is tonally and perplexingly off from everything that precedes it. There are several earlier places where Scorsese could have just called “cut” that would have made for an effective and powerful ending. This skillfully crafted picture, which so eloquently chronicles a horrific and shameful chapter of American history, deserves a better ending worthy of the weight of its story.
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Killers of the Flower Moon opens today at Bay Area theaters.
