Another crowning achievement in the lauded career of Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon is a true-crime saga both epic and intimate, and a reminder of how the sins of history should never disappear in the sands of time.
From Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave to Desmon Doss in Hacksaw Ridge, cinema has long reminded the world of its important figures and their stories once lost to history. Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon is another example of this.
A Native American from the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) found herself in the throes of a murder conspiracy that targeted her tribe – and indeed her family – after they became one of the richest people in the world when oil was found on Osage land in the early 1900s.
Into this time of prosperity and greed arrives Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) a WWI veteran who agrees to work for his uncle Will Hale (Robert De Niro) a successful cattle baron. When Ernest and Mollie fall in love, Hale manipulates his dim-witted nephew into marrying her with the intention of securing her oil headrights, a plan that involves murdering Mollie’s family.
What follows is an immersive delve into a tragic period of American history that director Martin Scorsese (The Irishman) brings to life with daring artistry and unflinching testimony. In some ways comparable to his gangster epics in the depiction of gun-toting hoods assuming power through fear, violence and corruption, Scorsese ultimately achieves what he could not with his 2002 sectarian saga The Gangs of New York in a retelling of American history in which a minority is targeted with callous inhumanity.
Where the latter films’ murderous despot in Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day Lewis) was transparent in his bigotry and hatred, the evil of Killers of the Flower Moon works under deception and corruption and goes by the name Will Hale.
While not the only figure to contribute to the “Reign of Terror” that befell the Osage people of whom a confirmed 60 (with speculation rising to the hundreds) were murdered between 1918-1930, Hale was the source of death and deception that befell Mollie’s family.
De Niro – who famously played Lucifer in the 1987 horror mystery Angel Heart – portrays a different kind of white devil in Killers of the Flower Moon; one who puts on a façade as “ally” while weaving a web of manipulation and violence that saw the streets and creeks of Oklahoma scattered with the bodies of Native Americans. It is a charismatic and chilling performance, and one of the best amongst the 10 films that De Niro has done with Scorsese.
DiCaprio – who is at his best when playing paranoid and desperate - complements with his own excellent turn as Ernest Burkhart, an angst ridden, pitiful, and pathetic man torn between the loyalty towards his wife and his kingpin uncle.
Truly remarkable, though, is Lily Gladstone. Standing her ground and making her mark alongside two of the finest actors in American cinema, Gladstone brings to life the spirit, the despair, and the resilience of this Osage woman and Catholic whose story is as remarkable as it is tragic.
With Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese again proves his masterful ability to create cinema at its engaging and pulsating best. He also delivers a stern reminder that the blood stains of history will never fade away.
