A new Martin Scorsese film comes with a great deal of annoying cultural baggage. Click bait hounds will dust off his comments about Marvel films and fan the flames of that non-controversy. Others will inform us that he “only makes gangster movies” while The Age of Innocence, After Hours, The Aviator, Hugo, The King of Comedy, Kundun, Silence and countless other films sit in plain sight, begging to differ. These debates aren’t based on insight. They are steeped in ignorance. At 81, our greatest living filmmaker keeps plugging away amidst the cacophony of social media and pop culture blogs, padding his impressive filmography as if he’s incapable of creating a cinematic misfire.
With Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese continues his streak of turning compelling literary non-fiction into immersive films (Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman). Flower Moon focuses on the Osage Nation of Oklahoma in the 1920’s as they inadvertantly strike oil on their tribal lands. One of the many gorgeous shots in the film shows members of the tribe dancing in slow motion as the black rain of oil falls on them.
Seemingly overnight oil wells go up, and white men begin to appear with business propositions. Whites and Osage begin to intermarry, giving the white men a stake in the oil holdings of their spouses. When Osage women fall ill and begin dying prematurely, there are fewer and fewer fingers in the pie, increasing the size of the stake controlled by each member of the Osage Nation (and their white spouses). Coincidence? Not if you remember your American history. What occurred in 1920’s Oklahoma was no different than handing blankets laced with smallpox to Native Americans in the 18th century. Everyone is just wearing nicer suits this time around.
The film focuses on William “King” Hale (Robert DeNiro) who has long established himself as an ally to the Osage Nation. He’s the walking, talking epitome of the Great White Savior stereotype. He can speak to the Osage people in their native tongue and talks to his white peers in a genteel southern accent. To the world at large, he’s a selfless philanthropist donating hospitals, dance schools and other essential services to the Osage Nation. Behind closed doors, he’s playing every angle for his own enrichment.
When Hale’s nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), returns from World War I, Hale introduces him to Mollie (Lily Gladstone), an unmarried Osage woman who’s a stakeholder in the oil strike. What appears to be a simple act of matchmaking develops a sinister purpose as the film unfolds. Hale uses the (initially) unwitting Burkhart as his straw man, a surrogate through whom he can consolidate a large oil stake that will ultimately be controlled by Burkhart and his children.
Flower Moon isn’t a whodunit or even much of a crime procedural. (The law enforcement officials don’t arrive until about two hours into the film’s 206-minute runtime.) It’s the tale of a continuing genocide against a disenfranchised people. The white characters reek of racism. When a local ranch hand is approached about committing a murder for King Hale, he balks at the thought of such an evil deed. He may be a career criminal, but he still has a moral line he won’t cross. When Hale’s emmisary explains that it’s “only an Indian”, the ranch hand takes the assignment without a second thought.
The film has been restructured from the original book to provide more of the Osage perspective, and you can’t imagine telling the story any other way. Gone are the stereotypes of the “ignorant savage” being duped by clever white men. Flower Moon is the tale of an abandoned people, disenfranchised men and women who have no one to turn to for legal recourse or remedy. The tribal elders openly discuss being victimized by their white business associates and lament that they are powerless to do anything about it. Fast forward fifty years, and you can envision African American leaders having the same conversation about their white oppressors.
With DeNiro and DiCaprio in the cast, it may be a surprise to learn that Lily Gladstone is the acting MVP of the film. She exudes a quiet strength throughout the film. While DeNiro and DiCaprio are acting with a Capital A throughout, you never see Gladstone performing. Her work is subtle and seamless. Awards season recognition is undoubtedly headed her way.
The other secret weapon is film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, a long-time Scorsese collaborator. The two have worked on so many films together they likely finish each other’s sentences as they work in the editing booth. I can hear casual film fans shouting: “Editing? What editing? It’s three-and-a-half hours long!” And that’s the point. It’s 206-minutes that moves briskly along like a finely tuned machine. Editing doesn’t equate to brevity or actively making a film shorter. It’s about maintaining a steady momentum for the duration of the film. Schoonmaker will be neck-and-neck with Oppenheimer’s Jennifer Lame for editing honors this year.
Much has been made about this tragic story of the Osage people being told by a white man and not a Native American filmmaker. To that criticism, I can only say: Even when it’s used to create art and tell important social and historical stories, filmmaking is still a business. Can you name a Native American filmmaker with the clout to put together a $ 200 million budget to make this film? Of course, you can’t. Sadly, you probably can’t name a Native American filmmaker at all. But, that’s a different topic altogether. The cultural appropriation question is a distraction, nothing but a tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing, not-so-subtle awards season mud-slinging.
Is this Scorsese’s final masterpiece? I certainly hope not. I hope he’s still making movies forty years from now. Is Flower Moon a masterpiece with a capital M that stands shoulder to shoulder with Raging Bull and Goodfellas? Not for me. It wouldn’t be in my all-time Top 5 of Scorsese films. But that’s not the metric at work here. It’s still a brilliant movie and one of the best films of the year.
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