In “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which premieres in theaters Friday, Oct. 20, Martin Scorsese played his greatest hits, a compilation of film techniques and casting choices that have aged like fine wine. His famed signature motifs dazzled through the performances of his leads.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Ernest) and Robert De Niro (Robert King Hale), two of Scorsese’s frequent collaborators. Their performance is balanced by the heartfelt spectacle put together by Lily Gladstone (Mollie).
The film is an epic Western crime saga that clocks in at 206 minutes long. Based on the true story and adapted from a nonfiction novel of the same name by David Grann, the film tells the story of an unlikely romance between a war veteran, Ernest Burkhart, and a member of the Osage Nation, Mollie Kyle.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” tells the story of suspicious murders happening within the Osage Nation, a tribe that became some of the richest people in the world overnight after oil was discovered underneath their land.
During the current era of assembly line-made superhero movies, Scorsese has been a vocal advocate against it. In an interview with Empire, he compared Marvel movies to theme parks and did not consider them to be real cinema.
In “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Scorsese used certain tropes of the golden age of cinema to bookend the story. To set up the oil history behind the Osage Nation, he utilized silent film techniques. Instead of using the typical method of putting text on black screens to deliver the epilogue of a story, Scorsese used a radio play format, playing an homage to one of Hollywood’s most beloved artists Orson Welles who started his career behind the mic for RKO Pictures.
Scorsese delivers the last line of the epilogue giving the film a sense of exclamation where he is reminding the audience that cinema is more than men in capes.
In his quest to make real cinema popular again, Scorsese summoned a duo of the most acclaimed actors and often collaborators of his —De Niro and DiCaprio. Scorsese and De Niro have worked on 10 feature films together. Meanwhile, Scorsese has six feature films with DiCaprio. “Killers of the Flower Moon” marks the first time both De Niro and DiCaprio have appeared together in a Scorsese film.
The tone of the film is set in the opening scene which involved both DiCaprio and De Niro’s riveting performance. Ernest arrives in Oklahoma to live with his uncle King. During their encounter, King asks his nephew if he likes girls. King doesn’t insinuate he should date a woman from the Osage Nation but the seed has been planted. As Ernest becomes King’s henchman, their relationship becomes influenced by their ever-long obsession with money and greed as they maneuver their way onto more money-like snakes.
When DiCaprio and De Niro share the screen, the audience is being told their actions are justified by greed and they make a believer out of anyone. Each of their scenes hinges on the exceptional acting by both performers. The duplicity of their performance becomes more evident when Mollie comes on scene.
Ernest finds love in Molly, an Osage Nation woman and proprietor of oil money. Her presence closes out the trifecta of leads in control of the film. Molly’s family is slowly becoming victims of the unexplainable murders. As each member of her family is killed, Molly becomes increasingly paranoid by everyone surrounding her while fighting diabetes. The death of her family drains the life out of Molly and Gladstone’s performance is stricken with a profound sense of sadness and outrage. Her emotional performance enforces the Machiavellian act that De Niro and DiCaprio are performing.
Gladstone’s performance contextualizes the film. Her performance reminds the audience of the horrendous reality that exists between Native Americans and the wolves that are constantly taking advantage of the disadvantaged. Her performance personifies the suffering that the Osage Nation feels after nothing is being done about the murders happening in the tribe.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is able to stay away from contemporary film cliches. It isn’t based on a comic book. It isn’t seeking to become a franchise. There are no CGI green screens used to tell the story. It is art that wows through powerful performances from its leads. It is art that captivates the eye because of the direction and storytelling of one of the great American directors. Instead of giving the audience a theme park, Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” delivers true cinema that cannot be missed.
