Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023) – Damn It Scorsese!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 20th October
Seen: 4th November

There are some directors who seem pretty much incapable of making a genuinely bad film, Martin Scorsese is one of those people who just seems incapable of making something that’s actually bad. It’s honestly kind of amazing the streak of undeniably great films that this man has had, he’s the kind of director whose filmography is so great you could have hour-long arguments about which is his best and there’s at least a dozen solid choices you could make. It’s kind of amazing to think that this man is still putting out absolutely brilliant films in his 80s and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down any time soon. Even now with another absolutely fascinating work, Killers of the Flower Moon shows the man keeps on hitting… but he also really needs to be told to make a film under 3 hours because it’s getting silly at this point.

Killers of the Flower Moon tells a version of the true story regarding the Osage tribe in the 1920s. The Osage tribe happened to have land that was on top of an oil deposit which in turn made them exceptionally rich, however, due to the racist laws of the time deeming them incompetent they required court-appointed guardians to manage their funds. One of these newly wealthy people is Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) who lives with her mother and siblings in a small home on their land. Mollie ends up getting into the cab of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the two begin a courtship. What Mollie is sadly unaware of is that Ernest was told by his uncle William King Hale (Robert De Niro) to court Mollie to try to get into her will and eventually take her wealth. Hale is also secretly the mastermind behind a rash of murders that are decimating the Osage population, all in an attempt to take their money and land by any means necessary.

It must be stated right off the bat that if you want a detailed look into the racial politics of this, specifically how the current indigenous people react to Killers of the Flower Moon, you should go look it up. Their voices absolutely should be heard first on this film because it is a film about their history and their dead and it’s been well reported that people who were consultants on Killers of the Flower Moon have some serious problems with it, those are important discussions to have and I am not qualified to have any of them. You can find articles full of reactions from native people, here’s one from the Guardian that quotes a lot of them but please take the time to read the perspective of the people this film should’ve represented a lot better than it did.

One of the big critiques that keeps coming up, one I absolutely agree with which is why I feel OK talking about it, is that for a film about a brutal moment of Osage history it’s kind of stunning how Killers of the Flower Moon almost entirely takes place from the perspective of the white men. Not just the white men, but the specific men doing the atrocities. Ernest in particular is almost played as a sympathetic bumbling figure at times, a guy who just does what he’s told and who genuinely loves the wife he keeps trying to kill. This is, on some level, a standard practice for a Scorsese film. Scorsese loves telling stories from the bad guys’ POV, it’s something he does better than most other people because he takes these bad guys and makes them compelling… it’s a bit harder for this to work when we’re being asked to spend time with people doing a literal genocide. Especially when the victims are, for the large part, barely characters at all in the film. 

The biggest and best indigenous character in Killers of the Flower Moon is easily Mollie, the biggest constant throughout the film is how she manages to show an insane resilience in the face of everyone she loves being murdered around her. It’s a performance built from strength, even in quiet moments you can see her thinking and trying to work out how to understand what’s going on here. Lily Gladstone easily carries the whole damn film on her back and the more she pops up, the more you wish that the film was actually about her and told more of her story. As it is she spends a lot of Killers of the Flower Moon being strong, resilient and silent but also manages to steal scenes with just a simple look. It’s wild to think that there’s someone who can share a scene with DiCaprio and De Niro and somehow draw attention away from them, but that’s what Gladstone does.

Now, should the issue of “This story needed to be told from a different perspective” not be a bother, it’s hard to deny that Killers of the Flower Moon is another great entry into Scorsese’s filmography. It’s compelling and intense, every little arc of its sprawling story told in glorious detail without shying away from the uglier elements. Even with its problem of perspective, the film does make sure to make it clear that we’re spending time with the bad guys. There’s no real sugarcoating here, it calls out how vile everything about this is and how wrong it is that a lot of these murders got barely any investigation. Every single scene has a moment of greatness in it, some element that reveals another piece of the tragedy that unfolded and all done in a way that feels like pure Scorsese and it’s all fascinating. This is a story that a lot more people needed to hear and while this might not be the ideal way to tell it, it’s still being told pretty damn well.

Of course, while this story is being well told, it’s also being told in excruciating detail over the 3.5-hour running time and frankly someone needs to get Scorsese to try and make a film that’s 2 hours long again. Sure, the pacing is mostly fine but it’s so damn long that it’s hard to really be able to give it your full attention for the full runtime, several scenes of this can just be tuned out without you missing much of the core story. It also doesn’t help with that core problem of “Why are we not hearing from the natives” because the bulk of the runtime is just with Leo’s character, even with three and a half hours it feels like not even half of that time is spent with a native person on screen let alone talking. It’s just too damn long, sure it fills every minute it has with something interesting but it’s not filled with something that is truly necessary and it all goes so slowly that it’s hard to care about. Maybe if Killers of the Flower Moon had the energy of Wolf of Wall Street, a three-hour Scorsese epic that felt like two hours, it’d be easier to watch.

It certainly helps that those three hours are impeccably filmed, every shot is just beautiful to look at and filled with insanely glorious detail from the set and costume designers who clearly worked overtime to bring this period of history to life. It also helps that the entire cast is on top of their game, everyone from the main cast to people who only get one scene to work with is doing everything they need to do in order to make compelling and believable characters. There isn’t a dud performance in the entire cast, even people who only get one line before being sent away deliver that one line splendidly. It’s one of the most enjoyable casts in a long time, making it so that even by the time you enter the third hour of Killers of the Flower Moon you’re still compelled to keep watching what’s going on.

The truly annoying thing about Killers of the Flower Moon is that despite its problems, despite the length and the lack of focus on the victims of the crime being presented, it’s still pretty damn great. It’s a Scorsese film, the man knows how to make a compelling crime drama that makes you determined to finish it. It’s impeccably acted by a cast of either current legends or soon-to-be legends (Lily Gladstone genuinely needs to start thinking about what she’s going to do around Awards time) and it tells a fascinating story that hopefully will encourage people to look in more depth at their history (at least in the states where that’s still legal!). It’s a good film, probably even a great film that’s undeniably fascinating on so many levels, it just has a few major flaws that will undoubtedly be hard barriers to a lot of people. If you can get past those barriers then there’s a great film waiting but it’s absolutely understandable if those barriers are too hard to get past.