Killers Of The Flower Moon Review: Scorsese Un-gangsters Himself To Deliver A Slow Paced Yet…
It was only a week after Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon hit theaters in Mumbai that I eventually watched the film. As the people “filed slowly and languidly into the hall” as Jim Morrison recites in one of his poems called ‘The Movie’, most of the seats were empty at CR2, Nariman Point, Mumbai with only about 30% capacity. The Uber driver took the left just before the slanting left that leads to CR2 on Marine Drive i.e. before the Trident, and so the cab had to circle all the way back to get the the mall.
But Uber drivers being idiotic aside, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this particular Scorsese film. He’s arguably one of my favourite directors of all time, but I had a fair idea of the plot and concept after watching a lot of interviews by him, Leo Di Caprio and Lily Gladstone, and the trailer of course, including one where Marty seemed pretty annoyed that people were calling his film an “indie” film, which was rather amusing. But I went in with the preconception that this was going to be all about Indians getting killed for oil money, and so I was rather surprised at how Scorsese retold and delivered the story and its finer details, while also progressively building up the plot which such guile and finesse.
The first few shots of the Indians offering prayers in a tent suggesting their kin would forget their ways and embrace White people’s ways was novel. But, Scorsese didn’t waste time getting straight into the main plot, you know, unlike Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon A Time In America’, which I tried watching last month, but was bored to death after the first one hour, although it started pretty interestingly with the opening apartment scene and the thugs chasing Noodles(De Niro).
New York is Scorsese’s hometown and I thought Once Upon A Time… would be a fresh take that wasn’t Scorsese telling a story about gangsters in NYC. But that minor sidetrack aside, Scorsese pulled some masterstrokes in Killers of the Flower Moon in several aspects, and to start the film in upbeat fashion, perhaps to balance the slight slow pace of the film in its entirety.
Instead of delving into the history of how the Indians profited off the oil they discovered, which could have been something most directors would’ve aimed at, Scorsese brilliantly starts a fast-paced montage, that was just very cool in conception, and as soon as Robbie Robertson’s “Osage Oil Boom” kicked in after that scene of the oil spurting out of the ground and the Indians dancing, I was hooked.
Scorsese is known to explore different themes in his films every now and then, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Aviator in recent memory and Taxi Driver etc., from way back. They’re a deviation from his stereotypical films of wise guys and mobsters chaperoning the streets of New York, Boston or elsewhere along with the crooked venality & crime of those cities’ rough streets— Goodfellas, The Departed, Casino, The Irishman & others, to name a few.
But the veteran director manages to weave enough mystery, in outlaying this particular plot of the Osage murders from the 1920s in Fairfax, Oklahoma. Perhaps, even calling for empathy while shedding light on the plight of the Native American people of the time; a story which was lost in time and barely ever made it into mainstream knowledge during that era, let alone now, over a century later. This was a story that needed to be told; a story that needed to see the light of day or otherwise would perhaps be lost forever in time. It was uncharted waters for Scorsese for sure, but this one was all about delivery.
The plot is built up sequentially — every part of the story, every killing, every event, almost layer upon layer like a wedding cake, just like the wedding of Molly(Lily Gladstone) and Ernest Burkhart(Leo DiCaprio) is a mix of traditions & beliefs, between Native American and Catholic rituals, and is jammed in between the early scheming by William Hale(Robert DeNiro) as he welcomes Ernest back from the war.
Hale, who calls himself “King” i.e. the “King of the Osage Hills,” manages to manipulate just about everyone he comes in contact with throughout the film, and DeNiro puts in a staggering performance as the manipulative and deceitful ranch owner, who lusts for power and that “gravy train”, regardless of the means in which he makes it, at the expense of the hapless Indians. With that Pink Floyd reference, or in general, whatever you prefer, Killers of the Flower Moon could’ve easily served as the 3.5 hr music video to Floyd’s ‘Money’ or ‘Pigs’.
But De Niro rolls back the clock, and maintains why Scorsese keeps going back to work with him repeatedly; one of the greatest of all time…. arguably. This was De Niro being De Niro, with all the ruthlessness, viciousness, ferocity (when needed), subtlety and expressiveness that we’ve come to expect of the veteran actor through the decades(and decades…) as he fits perfectly into the role of Hale, like the final blood-soaked Lego piece of the Lego town that’s built to crumble as Scorsese journeys through the psyche of Hale and his evil propaganda murder after murder, cover-up after cover-up in this graphic retelling. It’s also noteworthy to point out that the character Hale, is also around De Niro’s actual age. De Niro is 80 at the moment, at the time of writing this piece but this was a role that suited him to perfection.
The murders and the build up to them were pretty inventive. But there were some archetypal Scorsese non-linear killings and one customary narration scene involving Molly as she scans the faces of all the White folk at the train station and around town— your typical Scorsese film elements.
The first kill, (which I think was the first, if I’m not wrong) came out of nowhere as an Indian lady is shot in the head while she’s laying her baby in a pram, I think while the ‘Osage Oil Boom’ montage is still playing. But Scorsese’s shots of the killings were similar in design in terms of camera framing and angles we’ve been accustomed to seeing throughout his career. Most of the kills are all very Scorsese-esque, camera-centered, gun shot to the head, the body falling, comments by the killers after. Some of the murders were more over the top and elaborate like Molly’s sisters’ hit which involved Ernest hiring an explosives expert to blow up her entire house, ground up. Others were slow & gradual in the form of poison being injected into Hale’s victims.
The camera pans are exquisite, the bustling train station, the vehicles traversing around, the Wes Anderson style framing of shots of the houses(minus Anderson’s abhorrent colour grading). Some of the shots of the prairie lands, the blue flowers(that needed to be thrown in there given the film’s title), are all quite artistic as Scorsese got to flex his shots of scale and objectivity, although not on a Hitchcock level, of course. Some of those sequences, like the shots of the fires as the people toil away in the background deep into the night, were haunting and so aesthetically pleasing.
Naturally, after talking about that particular scene, the next area to address is the soundtrack and score(something I particularly assess & pay attention to while watching a film, here’s why).
Those shots of the fires raging in the fields through the windows of Molly and Ernest’s house, as Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground’ plays, was a moving bit of cinema — the perfect amalgamation of cinematography and music, as Johnson’s haunting moans make for a tragedy-soaked few minutes of screentime, almost like the dead Indians’ souls were humming them.
It was perhaps more tragic, in reality, that Robbie Robertson never got to see the final product of his astounding score to this film. Robbie Robertson, who was also Bob Dylan’s guitarist in the 60s apart from founding The Band, passed away on August 9th, earlier this year, just 2 and a half months before his final swansong in Killers of the Flower Moon hit theaters.
It was a rather unconventional approach to a score, heavily employing and using needle drops sandwiched between scenes to bring them to life and provide as a metronome for the film’s slow pace, which was essential. Robertson was a kid in a candy store as he cherry picked away at records and songs of classic and early Jazz, Blues, Country, and contemporary music of the 20s and 30s. They were subtle enough, but almost always playing through the movie. Robertson’s Blues-rooted score was also a refreshing shift from the Hans Zimmers, John Williams and Michael Giacchinos of the world, orchestral big band et al. So it was a welcome shift from musical ideas that are perhaps more mainstream. It was, rather immaculate in the end.
The screenplay was pretty well conceived also, as the murders progress one after another, and Scorsese kept a bit of gap for the story to unfold behind each murder, and using old 20th century terms like “melancholic” for, I guess, being suicidal and “sickly” for being sick, made me reflect, although briefly, about how some terms in the English language and linguistics have evolved over time — In 2023 it’s “bro” or “vibes”.
But minor amusing details aside, I would perhaps be taking a bit of a contrarian stand on Lily Gladstone’s performance. I do empathize with her statement in one of her interviews where she says that there’s only limited roles for Native American actors, but she was bang average. At times, her facial expressions remained unchanged and lifeless whether she was healthy and happy or being drugged by Ernest and sick. It was really nothing to rave about, like most critics and reviews suggested, which I totally felt compelled to expunge after watching her portrayal of Molly.
Di Caprio was dependable as the dimwitted and easily influenced and exploited Ernest Burkhart. He was nowhere near his best, like in Inception or Shutter Island, or The Departed, the latter two, of course being Scorsese productions, but he did his usual thing, like your regular Rodri or Sergio Busquets performance in holding midfield, with a Sofascore/Whoscored rating of 7.
In the end the karma police had their way as Hale and Ernest get found out by the FBI. To be fair, they didn’t cover up their tracks too well, or even try to. While also, I read that the book had significant parts about the formation of the FBI under Hoover in it, but Scorsese didn’t waste time on it, and the trial scenes also went by rather quickly. But by then, there was some bit of viewer fatigue.
Scorsese’s end to the film though was a touch of genius. The entire stage and radio broadcast show concept of announcing what happened to each of the characters was a proverbial rabbit out of the hat that was as innovative and totally out-of-the-box as it gets. It’s going to cause a rethink from directors the next time they think of adding just text about the events at the end of a film, like most films about true stories.
The shots of the finale were also marvelous — close ups of instruments, the musicians, the stage and announcers etc., which was an offbeat and intriguing way to wrap up the main pervading theme of White people killing Native Americans for oil, something I expected to be depicted in the end (Indian prayers or rituals or stuff akin to them).
There have been many wars fought for oil, but this one set in the heart of America in the small town of Fairfax, sent the place into hyper-combustion mode. There are arguments that propose oil wars aren’t fought for oil, which author Emily Meierding seems to justify with research, basically suggesting that the cost of war & the economic and diplomatic sanctions is more than the cost of oil, while also citing Donald Trump(who else?).
But the only blemish about the film, according to me, was the runtime. In hindsight, some of it could have gone faster. But more essentially, in a broader perspective, this was for the Native American people. I saw this interview of an actual Osage descendant at the premiere of the movie suggesting that he was upset that this film was told more through the lens of White people, which was perhaps justified, but Scorsese did manage to balance it out; he did put in as much realism and intrigue into the Osage and their story, background, culture and their history.
From the discovery of oil igniting the fortunes of the Osage Indians while depicting its obverse aspects in inviting “evil” in the form of greed and violence, Killers of the Flower Moon spills over into a modern cinematic classic of a story that delves into the dark side of capitalism in the early 20th century and the inhuman, remorseless and moral-less killings of the Osage, in a thrilling three and a half hour showpiece that tells a tale that would have surely been lost in the pages of history, until Martin Scorsese picked it up.
Final rating — 8.2/10