Killers of the Flower Moon has been billed by some as a revisionist Western, as its plot centres on relations between the native and settler communities of Oklahoma and it clearly takes sides with the First Americans.
It tells the true story of the murder of large numbers of the Osage Nation, a First American tribe, who became a target for exploitation and worse after oil was discovered on their ancestral land.
Perhaps predictably, the white colonialists are mostly venal, the colonised are generally noble victims and mixing between people of two cultures is an undiluted human tragedy.
However, the more distinctive aspects of the piece relate to power and predation as this operates at an interpersonal rather than societal level, as well as the emotional experiences of a man whose inner weaknesses cause him to fail as a husband, a father and ultimately as a human being. Here Scorsese's repeats and develops the focus of his prior work The Irishman (2019).
In this film Robert De Niro plays William King Hale, the uncle of World War One veteran Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Hale presents himself as a sympathetic white advocate of the Osage people, and perhaps even believes himself to be so, in a paternal sense, but his ultimate aim is to exercise revenue control. His method is to encourage male members of his family to marry females of the Osage Nation who have 'headrights', ownership of the right to extract oil from their reservation. The knowing and avuncular uncle sets the naïve Ernest to work, in exchange for his support after a traumatic war.
Some have complained about the film’s length, but it feels efficient. It is also a resolutely sombre and cinematically restrained work, in spite of its $200 million budget, although Scorsese allows himself a few moments of fiery cine poetry.
Scorsese’s restraint is, I think, motivated by the aim of showcasing the acting talents of De Niro and DiCaprio, both of whom he has nurtured more than any other. In what might be Scorsese’s swansong, his core players repay him in full. De Niro offers a performance of remarkable range and subtly, one of his best, as a character who manipulates others by playing father. DiCaprio is also superb as an agonised simpleton, who only half understands what is happening. We watch Burkhart being mentally colonised by Hale. Lily Gladstone, who plays Burkhart’s Osage wife is similarly assured and is a newish face to watch out for.
Killers of the Flower Moon is remorselessly noir in its tone, so much so that two thirds of the way through we become desperate. Like children we hope that the moral cavalry will arrive. It does, and order is temporarily restored, only for it to be revealed that the cavalry are early operatives from Hoover's newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation. Our foreknowledge of corruption at the Bureau complicates an initially uncomplicated resolve.
The film draws to a close with an epilogue, in which the story of the FBI investigation into the Osage murders is being retold on radio in dramatised propaganda form. In this scene Scorsese himself performs as an actor and Scorsese the director appears to be reminding us of the need to be sceptical of the truth of the foundational stories we are told. The classic American Western is of course the most obvious cinematic example of such a tale.
The final shot of the film is a long fixed perspective aerial take of an Osage ritual dance, with the dancers forming concentric circle lines. The dancers’ clothes feature vibrant primary colours, which contrasts with the muddy palette of earlier sections. As the camera slowly zooms out we are reminded that whilst our lives and personal dramas are short, the cultures we live endure. At this point Killers of the Flower Moon is very much a classic Western, of the melancholy type, but one with divided loyalties.
History, I predict, will be kind to Scorsese's end of career Italian American reply to the triumphalism of the classic W.A.S.P. Western.
While he is clearly effected by the first world war, Ernest was in fact not a soldier. He was a cook in the army. It is reflective off his character, living an underwhelming life, lacking in glory and virtue.