Killers of the Flower Moon: Scorsese’s fine piece of cinema raises difficult questions

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon might be set in the 1920s, but the world, unfortunately, hasn’t changed much since then. The colour of someone’s skin, their religion, gender, race, caste, or sexuality continues to predispose us to respond to their pain, humiliation, or death in a certain way – with shock, jubilation, or worse, indifference. These unequal power structures also mean that those with the means to tell these stories often share the identities of the oppressors. What does that mean to the story and how we view it?

That’s a necessary conversation to have, especially in India, where we’re seeing the emergence of films written and directed by those who come from marginalised communities. Film criticism has woken up to the difference between these narratives and those created with an outsider gaze, even if well-meaning, and it’s relevant to look at Scorsese’s frank portrait of greed and grief, too, under this light. 

Killers of the Flower Moon is based on a book of the same title written by American journalist and author David Grann. It traces the story of the Osage nation and the systematic exploitation of its people by white Americans after oil was discovered in their land.

The ‘flower moon’ refers to the time when the land bursts into bloom, heralding the arrival of spring. The Osage find themselves rich, thanks to the oil, but beneath the gaiety and sudden prosperity of the tribe, the rot has already begun to set in. The background score alternates between cheerful, happy music for the “show” and settles into grim minimalism when we see the real picture. The screenplay intercuts these sequences, trusting the intelligence of the audience to piece together what’s happening. 

Leonardo Dicaprio in Scorsese’s sixth film plays Ernest Burkhart, a cook in the infantry who has just returned from the war to his uncle William King Hale’s (Robert De Niro) ranch. The camera swoops past the verdant land and cattle to land on Hale’s home, as if offering a predatory view of all that lies open to plunder. Quickly, the charming Burkhart succeeds in romancing Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman with three sisters and an ailing mother. He is attracted to her, but his interest deepens with some nudging from his uncle. If Burkhart were to marry her, he could someday claim ownership of her headright – the right to receive a quarterly distribution of oil money.

Mollie isn’t unaware of his ambitions. Early on, she calls him a “coyote”, an animal associated with dishonesty and avarice. But when one of her sisters tells her that he must actually love her since his uncle is already rich, Mollie buys into the theory. It’s an almost Austenian world – sisters with different personalities, a worried mother, men with eyes on the property, and a quest for true love. But unlike Austen’s heroines who are rewarded with deserving husbands, Mollie and her sisters can harbour no such hope. 

De Niro is fantastically gruesome as the self-appointed patriarch of the local community. He speaks the language of the Osage, participates in their customs, asks after their welfare, and displays no hint of his real motives. Dicaprio looks too old to carry the label of the “dumb boy” (as he’s called in one scene), but is masterful in his portrayal of the deceitful Burkhart. Wolf of Wall Street 10 years ago and coyote in Killers of the Flower Moon, Dicaprio eats up the role with relish. 

Neither Burkhart nor Hale believes themselves to be bad – and this conviction is rooted in their complete othering of the Osage as less-than-human. In one scene, a man is offered money to kill someone and he refuses. But when it is clarified that the target is Osage, he takes the job – “That’s different”, he says. It’s the kind of convenient differentiation that has enabled genocide across centuries.

At the heart of Killers of the Flower Moon is the marriage between Burkhart and Mollie, and the changing nature of their relationship. Lily Gladstone is of Native American origin, and she invests Mollie with shattering dignity. Yet, we never really meet Mollie the way we meet Burkhart. She and the rest of the Native American characters are cloaked in an air of mystique, and we notice more of their jewellery and clothing than we do of their personalities. There is a lot of emphasis on the Native American way of life and their close bonds with nature, but the gaze feels touristy. The black and white photographs of the Osage startle you into remembering that these are actual historical events – still, there is a distance between these characters and the viewer, a distance that nearly dissolves when it comes to the white men, however despicable they might be. Burkhart’s relationship with his children, too, is unexplored. They are just part of the background for the most part.

What Scorsese focuses on is Burkhart’s conflicting feelings about what he’s doing to Mollie and her people. It’s a questionable choice – should the pain of a white man gain precedence in a story about colonialism and genocide? Is it necessary to understand him at the cost of taking away space from his victims? Why make a 206-minute film centred on his devastation when his actions had far-reaching consequences on an entire community? But then, how authentic would it be if Scorsese made a film centring on a Native American character? 

Should we just be glad that some stories get told at all? Killers of the Flower Moon is a fine piece of cinema, and engaging with these difficult questions only makes the experience of watching it richer.

Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.

Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture, and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015.