‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Turns Journalism Into Cinema

Grann’s novel, told through the eyes of Mollie Burkhart—a Native woman whose mother and three sisters were among those killed—is as much a factual retrospective as it is a cultural introduction to the Osage, with its frequent detours into the meaning behind their clothing and traditions. Killers of the Flower Moon changes the narrative point of view, telling it from the killers’ perspectives for the most part, but it remains a vivid, multifaceted portrait of the Osage tribe, owing to the script having been heavily re-written with their input. In effect, it takes each essayistic detail of the book and turns it into backdrop and dramatic texture. Rather than merely being observed, each ritual surrounding life, marriage, and death is portrayed in all its richness. Understanding each tradition results not from explanation, but aesthetic experience; Scorsese may have a penchant for momentum and fluidity, but he knows exactly when to slow down and ruminate on the spiritual implications of his cinematic capers.

Rather than merely being observed, each ritual surrounding life, marriage, and death is portrayed in all its richness. Understanding each tradition results not from explanation, but aesthetic experience.

While the film’s top-down structure clues the audience in on everything the killers know (and everything their Osage victims don’t), a number of its individual scenes shift the narrative focus back into Osage hands, allowing for a more meaningful exploration of how death is perceived by the movie’s Native characters. As Osage critic Shannon Shaw Duty notes for Osage News, the opening scene—set decades before the book begins—is borrowed from the novel A Pipe for February by Osage author Charles H. Red Corn. It depicts a funeral held not for a deceased tribesman, but for a ceremonial pipe, which the tribe buries and leaves behind, effectively mourning the gradual loss of their culture, thanks to the encroachment of whiteness on Native lands, forcing a stricter assimilation into “western civilization.” It makes the film a microcosmic depiction of Manifest Destiny; what is being killed, during Killers of the Flower Moon, isn’t just people, but an entire way of life.

Scorsese’s encyclopedic knowledge of cinema comes in handy, because he frames the on-screen depiction of Native Americans as inseparable from the vast history of their mis-treatment at the hands of white America. And so, he takes a subversive approach to depicting Mollie (Lily Gladstone), her family, and her tribe, using the stylistic hallmarks of early moviemaking (like the title cards of silent films) to introduce them as movie stars—a place Native Americans have seldom occupied onscreen—as they saunter around a rich township brimming with life. While most of the film unfolds in widescreen, it shifts here into the squarish 4:3 aspect ratio of eras gone by, presenting wordless, black-and-white montages of Osage joy, revelry and luxury in the roaring ’20s, capturing glitz and glamor akin to Hollywood’s Golden Age. Scorsese even depicts a wedding—part Osage, part Catholic—with the same energetic sprawl and observant wide shots as the opening wedding scene from The Godfather, a quintessential American masterpiece of the New Hollywood era by his friend and peer, Francis Ford Coppola. It’s as if Scorsese were reinserting these characters not only into parts of cinematic history where they were previously absent, but where—he argues through his images—they always belonged.

It’s as if Scorsese were reinserting these characters not only into parts of cinematic history where they were previously absent, but where—he argues through his images—they always belonged.

The book opens several years into Mollie’s marriage to Ernest Burkhart—nephew of respected cattle magnate and lead conspirator William Hale, a two-faced friend to the Osage—but the film rightly jumps back in time, depicting the couple’s genuine romance and establishing a sense of trust. Ernest, a chauffeur with dreams of settling down, is played by former ’90s heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio, who arrives by train with as much spark and enthusiasm as his intro in Titanic. But the closer the camera gets to Ernest (especially in Mollie’s absence), the more we see what Mollie does not. There’s a twinkle in Ernest’s eye during scenes of their flirtatious courtship, but when he speaks to other white characters and outlaws, away from Native ears, the camera always seems to catch a glimpse of his open mouth, revealing a set of discolored, rotten teeth. There’s something secretly putrid about him, though it becomes not-so-secret the moment Hale (Robert De Niro) enlists him into a series of violent schemes to acquire Osage wealth. “I just love money!” Ernest frequently remarks to his co-conspirators.

DiCaprio and De Niro deliver rigorous, soul-chilling performances that could easily be called “career-best,” but more vitally, they seem to reach into their respective pasts in order to create not just individual characters, but compendiums of their own onscreen careers, drawing similarities and allusions to their previous works with Scorsese. Ernest’s wide-eyed glare, when he makes his greed for money known, recalls DiCaprio’s performance as fraudulent stockbroker Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Meanwhile, De Niro—who vacillates between southern charm and silent chills—lies somewhere between the deceptive smiles of violent charmer Max Cady in Cape Fear, and the icy compartmentalization of mob hitman Frank Sheeran in The Irishman—another film in which Scorsese re-examines cinematic imagery by recreating scenes from both his own work and The Godfather. All three aforementioned Scorsese films are part of his recurring examination of the moral rot infesting American power structures (and structures familiar to him in general; Silence is about the colonial history of the Catholic church), themes immediately relevant to a story of white supremacy and white perpetrators killing Native Americans practically out in the open.

However, despite this cinematic self-reflexivity, which frames the harebrained killers as mafiosos, the type of movie most relevant to Killers of the Flower Moon is actually the Western, perhaps the genre most responsible for cementing the “savage” image of Native Americans throughout the 20th Century. Not only does Robbie Robertson’s score frequently quote its musical hallmarks, but minor references to the genre subtly re-enforce the movie’s themes. Osage elders, wary of the white attention brought by their newfound wealth—it attracts white men like Ernest, many of whom married Osage women—also frequently lament their Native language and traditions being increasingly subsumed by whiteness with each generation. It’s garishly fitting, then, that one of Mollie and Ernest’s children is nicknamed “Cowboy.” While this wasn’t an invention of the film, the name is spoken frequently and loudly enough to draw attention to itself with a tongue-in-cheek awareness of cinematic history yet to come, as if the very next generation of Mollie’s family were doomed by their proximity to whiteness. At one point, during their early romance, Mollie finally reciprocates Ernest’s advances by presenting him with a gift: a cowboy hat. It’s a sweet gesture with blood-curdling implications, all but marking her family for death the moment its brim first touches his crown.

This sort of dramatic irony wouldn’t stand out nearly as much had the movie followed the novel’s structure, and had only revealed William and Ernest’s involvement in the murders in retrospect. By presenting their actions up front—their crimes were, after all, carried audaciously out in the open, and were known to many of their white peers—the film allows questions about Ernest’s complicity (and thus, his morality) to linger and putrefy, as if the camera were locked in some spiritual battle each time it landed on DiCaprio’s face. The abused trust between Mollie and Ernest—whose love is real and complicated—functions as a focused metaphor for the abused trust between communities like the Osage and the white structures charged with their protection.

By the end of the story, Scorsese finds an unexpected and roundabout (yet wholly moving) way to dramatize the complicity of white storytellers in the long-standing project to reduce Native lives and struggles. He peers through time in a moment of stunning self-reflection that further collapses entertainment history to include not only the Western, but radio shows, modern advertising, and even Killers of the Flower Moon itself—as if the film were but a minor gesture towards rebuilding broken trust.