Having not read the book that Killers of the Flower Moon is based on, I can’t say conclusively that the movie would have worked better if it had also told the story from the Federal Agent’s perspective. I suspect that it would have, because all criminal investigations have a natural propulsive quality to them that pull you in. True crime stories are addictive because viewers want to experience the thrill of the investigation and hopefully see justice served in the end. The problem Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth reportedly had with using that structure is that it would have relegated the Osage to the periphery and placed white men as the central figures of the story (as both villains and heroes). However, in placing Mollie and the Osage at the center of the events, the story loses nearly all of its dramatic tension as a result. The movie explains who the bad guys are, what they are doing and why from very early on, and the story unfolds from there without any real surprises to it. The audience is asked to witness each killing (or mysterious death) until the federal agents eventually arrive to put a stop to things at the two hour mark.

Curiously, the narrative approach doesn’t pay off as expected because the movie still ends up spending most of its time focusing on white characters. However, the movie still has enough going for it that makes it worth seeing. The movie is beautifully photographed and the overall production design is outstanding. It features another handcrafted score by Robbie Robertson that slyly accentuates the deceitfulness of the story. De Niro delivers another classic performance as a Scorsese villain whose entitlement knows no bounds. Gladstone is a revelation as Mollie, a multi-faceted character who makes us feel the anger and despair that wracked the Osage for years. DiCaprio’s commitment to playing against type as the dimwitted Earnest is admirable, but I often found his character too stupid to be credible. Jesse Plemons is a pleasant surprise playing against type as the deceptively sharp Agent Tom White. Through it all, Scorsese tells the story with an apologetic fascination, where the tragedies blur together like a slow-motion stabbing. Killers of the Flower Moon ultimately succeeds is as an honest portrait of a shameful period in America’s history, where the (white) men behaving badly are nothing more than greedy, brutal thugs. Its a good movie that aspires to greatness but never quite reaches it. Recommended.

Analysis

Sometimes you can do the right thing for the right reasons…and still end up with something that isn’t quite right. This is how I feel about Killers of the Flower Moon, a movie that has a lot going for it but never comes together as a compelling drama.

There are many aspects of the movie that I admired. The performances by Robert DiNero and Lily Gladstone are exceptional, both deserving of the praise they’ve been given. Jesse Plemons is solid as the FBI agent. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto frames every shot beautifully, even the horrifying ones. Robbie Robertson’s jangly, blues-influenced score gives the movie a distinctly sad rhythm. Finally, Martin Scorsese directs the heck out of the story. Like all of his films, this one feels alive in ways that few other directors can accomplish. Scorsese gives his films a distinct vibe that nobody has been able to replicate, almost as if his films have a soul. And yet, given the subject matter, the movie just isn’t as gripping as I thought it would be.

Before seeing the movie, I’d read that the script was rewritten so that the story would be told not from the perspective of Federal Agent Tom White. The concern the filmmakers had was that the original script, which hewed closely to the plot of David Grann’s 2017 book, resulted in yet another troubling “white savior” narrative. In this case, it would be White and his fellow Federal Agents coming to the rescue of the Osage, who would be depicted largely as helpless victims. This would have put the movie in the same category as Mississippi Burning, which focused almost exclusively on the white characters played by Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe and Frances McDormand and relegated the African American victims to the background. Scorsese was certainly aware of the criticisms that would be leveled against himself and his film if his film used that approach, and had the script rewritten to put Native American Mollie Burkhart and her family at the center in the story. This approach, done under the auspices of inclusivity and sensitivity for the Native American people upon whom the story revolves, results in a story that is moving at times but still results in white characters driving the story.

To be clear, the emphasis on the Mollie Burkhart character was not the reason for the movie problems. As portrayed by Lily Gladstone, she’s easily the most nuanced character in the movie. She portrays Mollie with a quiet, insightful sensitivity that you can’t help but care about her and the horrific tragedies that beset her family. When her sister Minne dies from the same mysterious “wasting disease” that also took her mother, you feel her sorrow. When her sister Rita is found murdered in a gully, you feel her rage. Mollie is the emotional center of the story and infuses everything we see with her spirit. She’s our on-screen representative throughout, helping us identify with the betrayal the Native Americans felt at the hands of the white men they befriended, loved and married. If Gladstone’s performance wasn’t as good as it was, the movie wouldn’t have worked at all. Unfortunately, before Mollie can become the center of the story, the movie has to introduce us to her future husband, Earnest Burkhart, and his uncle William Hale.

Before we meet Earnest and his Uncle Bill, the movie spells out what the crux of the story is. White people are murdering the Osage to obtain their oil royalty payments, also referred to as “head rights”. We see a Native American dying from being poisoned, then a husband shooting his Native American wife and staging it to look like a suicide. As we soon learn, there is a conspiracy among the white men who wield power and authority in the community, allowing the murders to be committed in broad daylight without repercussions. Among the men who is pulling the strings behind the scenes is William Hale, a power broker and false friend of the Osage. When his nephew Earnest shows up looking for work, Bill immediately recruits him into his insidious plot. Within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, we already know what will happen and who is responsible. For the next two hours or so we see the plot unfold and bear witness to the tragedies that are brought upon the Osage. The movie wants us to sympathize with the Native Americans, and it definitely succeeds in accomplishing that. The problem is that as the villains–Earnest, Bill and their accomplices are all one-dimensional characters.

The movie wants to show us that the conspiracy didn’t work because those involved were geniuses or even clever. It worked because everybody was in on it. The plan that Bill oversaw was not unlike a Ponzi scheme in that those at the top reaped most of the rewards, while those at the bottom did the dirty work for their money. To that end, Bill knew that the best way to insulate himself from the crimes was to have dumb people working under him who could take the rap if things ever went wrong. (Bill is basically a mafia boss with a country drawl.) This is why Bill recruited Earnest, because of his lack of smarts. Bill immediately pegged him as a rube, someone who he could manipulate out of greed. While depicting the villains in a cartoonish way makes sense for the message the movie is trying to convey, it reduces the story into one where Native Americans are frequently killed by “country bumpkins”. It’s one thing to be outraged by the intentional slaughter, it’s another when you see it being performed by men who are as dumb as a bag of hammers.

Speaking of dimwits, Earnest may not be the dimmest wit of the bunch of murderous white men, but he’s close. Because Mollie is at its center of the story, Earnest must be present whenever she is. (They’re married for a majority of the story.) And because Earnest is also the man Bill has put in charge of carrying out his marching orders, he becomes the driver of the plot. This could have worked if the movie showed Earnest as having any inner conflict over his role as husband and assassin. Unfortunately, despite his assertion that he’s not “thick”, Earnest is a simpleton who is easily swayed to do things that are not in his best interest. What the movie had hoped to establish with Mollie is lessened by the presence of Earnest and his lowlife gang of criminals, all of whom act and sound like refugees from Hee-Haw or Green Acres.

Because we know what Bill’s plan is from the get-go and that Earnest will blindly do whatever his uncle asks him to do, there is no tension or surprise to the story. While the movie does let us know about the victims before they are unceremoniously killed, they all predictably end up dead before long. The movie does give the Native Americans agency, showing them enlisting others to their cause and even petitioning the President for help. However, the movie asks us to bear witness to one Native American being murdered after another for over two hours. At one point, I couldn’t help but sympathize with a tribal leader who tells White that they’ve lost count of how many of their kind have been either murdered or died under mysterious causes. Unsurprisingly, Scorsese manages to hold the movie together, making it a tone poem that alternates between the mournful and the scornful–until the Federal Agents arrive. Scorsese’s skill as a storyteller makes the combination of the subtlety of the Native American characters and the obviousness of the white characters work.

When the Federal Agents finally do come a-callin’, the movie obtains the forward momentum that had eluded the story until that point. That the movie delays this event until the 2:05 mark speaks to how reluctant the filmmakers were to show white people coming in to save the day. They couldn’t avoid it, however, since that is what actually happened, but they effectively minimized it by placing it at the tail-end of the movie. I suppose that this narrative choice does help the audience understand the relief that the Native Americans did. After witnessing so much death and sadness, someone finally heard their pleas and offered to help. (The $20,000 the Osage sent to Washington to get President Coolidge’s attention would be the equivalent of $344,000 today.) With that in mind, I suppose the audience gets off easy by only having to endure what happened over a period of ten years in a couple of hours. If Scorsese had truly wanted to be subversive, he could have ended the movie with Plemons’ character showing up and fading to black, and letting title cards detail what happened next. That would have denied the audience from feeling the cathartic release at seeing justice being handed down. However, Scorsese is not one to leave audiences feeling cheated. This doesn’t mean he wants to let the audience off easy.

Perhaps Scorsese sensed that ending the movie with Earnest and Bill’s convictions would have left the audience the wrong message. To clarify things, he tacks on two codas that deflate the notion that justice was served on behalf of the Osage. First is a live radio broadcast that explains how limited that justice was, with Scorsese giving the final word on how none of it made up for what happened to Mollie Burkhart, her family or her people. Second is an overhead shot of a modern-day Osage powwow, underscoring how they have persevered, despite how things were settled over a hundred years ago. These closing scenes encapsulate what Scorsese had been trying to say for the length of the movie, that justice ultimately isn’t about trials and convictions, but in being able to tell your story and have it be heard.

Pictures of violence

Martin Scorsese has had enough of people misinterpreting or mischaracterizing his films. That’s the impression I had while watching Killers of the Flower Moon. He’s let it be known that he’s heard the unfair criticisms leveled against some of his films, namely that it romanticizes and glorifies the violent acts of vicious thugs. Starting with The Irishman, Scorsese has put film bros on notice. With that movie and now this one, he’s saying in no uncertain terms that he will no longer depict white men and the evil that they do in such a way that can be incorrectly interpreted as vicarious fun. From here on out, Scorsese is leaving nothing to chance and fully expects his audience to condemn what they see.

Of course, I have no insight into Scorsese’s thoughts or his creative process. However, I can’t escape the feeling that he’s grown frustrated with people wrongly identifying with the bad people in movies like Goodfellas, Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street. He never made those movies so that anyone would see the characters as heroes, let alone be admired. Be that as it may, his portrayal of them made it possible for viewers to enjoy those movies for all the wrong reasons.

Scorsese’s previous depiction of white bad men doing bad things was always intended to make people feel uncomfortable or horrified at what they saw. That being said, he had a tendency to lessen the impact of what he was showing through humor and his own directorial virtuosity. The bad guys in Goodfellas, for example, were so funny that we forgave them for their sins because they made us laugh. Additionally, Scorsese often filmed the violence, or its aftermath, in a stylish and ironic way that allowed us to be detached from what we just saw. Did Joe Pesci just shoot Samuel L. Jackson in the head? Oh look, here’s a cool slow-mo shot of the shot tremors traveling down Pesci’s arm. Later, when the montage of dead mobsters turning up near the end of the movie, it’s presented in such a way that it’s impossible not to laugh at the gallows humor aspect of it all. (I still chuckle at Henry Hill’s statement that one dead gangster was so frozen that it took three days to thaw him out for the autopsy.)

Scorsese’s earlier films also had a tendency to not show how the antics of his antisocial characters impacted their innocent victims. In Goodfellas and Casino, the victims are overwhelmingly gangsters. There’s no reason for the audience to feel sorry when one gangster is killed by another gangster because–to quote Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II, that’s the life they had chosen. Casino does include a scene showing a thug recklessly shooting up a diner to take out a rival and killing innocent people in the process, but the movie spends no time dwelling on the collateral damage from his actions. Instead, the clumsiness is viewed in how much it inconvenienced Joe Pesci’s Nicky Santoro. While he does voice his disgust in the voice-over narration over how the thug killed a waitress who came in on her night off, neither he nor the movie acknowledges how her death affected her family and loved ones. Instead, the movie shows Joe Pesci’s Nicky Santoro getting retribution on the thug by crushing his head in a vice.

With The Irishman and now Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese has taken a noticeably different approach to depicting violence. Gone are the stylistic flourishes, killer needle-drops and camera wizardry. Instead, the movie shows us scene after scene of white men killing Osage, all shot with an unflinching eye that demands us to confront the horrific nature of the acts. In the beginning, there’s a scene of an Native American man writhing on the floor after being poisoned, then a young mother being shot by her husband while her baby lies in a carriage nearby. Both scenes are shot as one uninterrupted take, effectively demanding that we acknowledge the horrific acts being shown to us display.

Scorsese uses a similar approach when depicting murders for the remainder of the film, but he also frames them in a way that emphasizes both the helplessness of the Osage and the uncaring aspect of their killers. For the murder of Henry Roan, Scorsese spends time showing us that John Ramsey first befriended Roan first and soon became his drinking buddy. Then, when Ramsey kills Roan, Scorsese directs the scene as a single take with a single medium shot, the combination of which makes us feel both sad for Roan as a victim and shocked at the offhanded way that he was killed. Scorsese also shows Mollie mourning his death, giving his passing more emotional weight than if it had only been necessary for Bill to make a life insurance policy claim.

Scorsese follows this same pattern for Rita’s murder. First she spends the night drinking with her husband and a mutual friend. Then, Scorsese uses a medium shot and a single take to capture her murder in a way that is both excruciating and incomprehensible. Byron and his friend lead Anna into a gully, sit her on a rock and shoot her in the back of the head. The killers show no emotion throughout, dumbly observing her lifeless body on the ground for several moments before shambling off in the morning light. Previously, Scorsese would have let the audience off the hook after having us witness this shocking death, but not now. Later in the movie, Scorsese visualizes Millie putting together the pieces of the day when her sister died. When she realizes that she welcomed Byron home the morning he killed her sister, Scorsese offers no refuge for the audience. Instead, he makes us feel the same horror that she feels over the knowledge that her people have been betrayed by those who they call friends and even husbands.