Killers of the Flower Moon

 

Martin Scorsese's engrossing masterwork Killers of the Flower Moon takes the true story of the murder of members of the wealthy Osage tribe in Oklahoma in the 1920s and turns it into a study of corruption, greed and white supremacy.

The picture's 206-minute running time covers about a dozen bloody years, when white settlers on Osage land overflowing with oil find ways to insinuate themselves into tribal affairs in hopes of eventually making themselves rich. Standing between the schemers and the tribe's money are laws prohibiting non-tribal members from inheriting oil rights ... except through marriage.

Robert De Niro, Scorsese's longtime collaborator, is William "King" Hale, the prime schemer and uncle to returning doughboy Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a slow-witted young man with no demonstrable talent who goes to work as a cab driver.

Through this job, he meets an unattached Osage woman named Mollie, played by the remarkable Lily Gladstone, whom he is encouraged by his uncle to woo, as Mollie's mother is sickly, her older sister a destructive alcoholic, and her other sisters already married. Mollie herself is suffering from diabetes. King tells Ernest if he marries Mollie and lets "nature" take its course her family's great wealth will one day be his, or rather theirs.

The plan progresses. Members of Mollie's family are slowly killed off by ghostly figures, leaving her only support Ernest, who claims to love her more than he does money, and King.

More than 20 Osage members are murdered, and the federal government dispatches investigators led by Tom White (the ever-reliable Jesse Plemons) to ferret out the killers.

Scorsese weaves into the tapestry of this "gangland" tale much historical and cultural context about the Osage people, and it is in those passages -- some staged as newsreel footage and others as dreams and fantasy -- that the director offers his most elegiac imagery.

Most notably for me was a field-burning scene late in the picture that depicts the event giving the picture and its source material its meaning. It is chillingly emblematic of the destruction of not only Osage people but all Native American tribes.