Killers of the Flower Moon

Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hours, 26 minutes
Writers: Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese
Director: Martin Scorsese

Quick Impressions:
No movie has ever so inspired me to quote the opening line of Anna Karenina.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Killers of the Flower Moon could have been titled The Miserable People Begin to Feel Worse. If you want to feel better about your marriage, watch this movie. I finally found a family more dysfunctional than the people in American Beauty!

This is a mash-up of crime drama, revisionist Western, social justice exposé, and A Long Day’s Journey into Night. 

I loved the film. I’ve been excited to see it since the project was announced because I always enjoy Scorsese/DiCaprio collaborations, and I’m also a big fan of Robert De Niro in crime boss mode.  Captivating, too, is Scorsese’s passion for the material. He really wants to tell this story. He even puts himself in the film at the end, to make sure we’re listening. I’m with him. It’s a gripping story that should be shown to movie audiences. The United States has wronged a lot of people, but if it’s a contest, we probably wronged the Native Americans the most. I remember vividly TAing for an American lit course when the professor shared the disquieting fact that our government made hundreds of treaties with Native Americans and honored none of them. The exact number of treaties has slipped my mind. The “honored none of them” part is what sticks. That’s not a great record.

In this film, the United States government (in the form of the newly created Bureau of Investigation) steps in at the end on the side of the murdered Osage tribe members. But, watching, I got the idea the agents cared less about the plight of the murdered townspeople and more about taking down the guy who thought he was untouchable. In the end, it seems less about justice than ego. What gets the government’s attention is that larger-than-life white man who thinks he can flout the law. They want to take him down, to serve justice to him.

Meanwhile, the woman at the center of the story is getting gaslit before it was a thing. Her situation reminds me of last year’s Oscar nominee Women Talking. (“You feel like you’ve been raped in the night? Must be demons! Your teeth got knocked out? That’s probably your imagination!”) Mollie Burkhart’s situation is so relatable. She knows (on some level) her family and friends are being murdered. She’s pretty sure she’s going to be murdered (or possibly is being murdered currently). There’s just nothing she can do. She should speak up, right? She does! Again and again! Nobody cares. And she’s in quite a fix because for the longest time the only people with power and influence who are listening to her and trying to help her are also the ones committing the murders!

I left the theater convinced Lily Gladstone would get a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance as Mollie.

“She might even win,” I said to my husband. “I think she’ll win.”

I don’t make predictions, but I know a sure thing when I see one. I mean, there are three names on that movie poster. Two of them are DiCaprio and De Niro, huge Hollywood stars. But I left raving about the other one, the Native American woman, the relative unknown. Especially because her character is at the heart of this historically significant story, a Best Supporting Actress win for Lily Gladstone feels inevitable.

But she’s running in lead. I found that out at home. It’s not surprising, I guess. After all, I checked because I started wondering, “It’s such a strong performance, and her character is the heart of this unique story. Is she being campaigned as the lead actress?” She is.

I rewatched The Departed recently. This seems like a reverse Departed scenario. Sure, Gladstone is the lead actress. But she would win in supporting. She would win!

Oh well. I don’t get to make decisions about anything. On the bright side, you can’t blame me when anything happens. (That’s the bright side for me, to be clear.) (Would America Ferrera have a shot in supporting? To me, the dialogue eclipses the actress there, but I’m not sure how Oscar voters feel.)

So far, the only sure Oscar contenders I’ve seen this year are Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie, and Oppenheimer. Even in lead, I think Gladstone will be nominated for an Oscar for this performance. She’s conspicuously good. Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio are on screen, yet you’re like, “I’m so fascinated by this woman who’s not talking much!” She says so much with her eyes. Largely non-verbal performances sometimes drive me crazy, but hers is fantastic.  (Admittedly, she has plenty of lines, but it’s the non-verbal touches that make the performance so special.)

This fall, we’re spending most of our time at high school football games and marching competitions! I’m quite impressed with us for finding four hours (including trailers) to watch a movie. We had to get pretty creative to make this work. Killers of the Flower Moon didn’t feel 3 hours, 26 minutes long to me. Lately, I tend to have focus issues during long movies (because I have limited time and so much to write.) But I would have watched more of this one. As a late surprise, Brendan Fraser and John Lithgow show up for the courtroom scenes, and their late inclusion made me think, “Oh maybe the second half of Killers of the Flower Moon is a trial.” But the film was already almost over. I thought it went by fairly quickly. I didn’t even finish eating my breakfast (i.e. popcorn).

The Good:
Here’s my two-sentence synopsis. In 1920s Oklahoma, a white man marries an Osage woman for her oil money and spends the next three-and-a-half hours slowly murdering her entire family. He expects the marriage to work.

It’s fun to imagine this story as letters to an advice column. Ernest could write in, “I’m complicit in the murders of my wife’s family, and now I’m slowly poisoning her. Everything’s going to be okay, right?” Mollie’s letter would say, “I’m pretty sure my husband’s going to kill me. My family has obviously been murdered. Probably by him. I keep telling everyone, but no one will help me. Can my marriage survive?”

To me, probably the most compelling aspect of the film is that DiCaprio’s character (Ernest Burkhart) loves his wife and wants his marriage to work. He’s got some next level cognitive dissonance on display. If he didn’t love his wife, the whole thing would just be an average story of murder and greed, one more instance of US citizens betraying and slaughtering Native Americans.  It would still be gripping as historical crime drama. But Ernest does love her, and he doesn’t seem to understand that his actions will result in outcomes discordant from his goals. So the film also becomes a gripping psychological drama, the slow-burning character study of a desperate, confused man as we get to watch DiCaprio sink further and further into his wretchedness.

I relate to this particular brand of lunacy.  Watching him plunge little by little into guilty desperation, I thought, “This is how things always work out for me, too. This always happens to me. I do something very evil, and then all my schemes slowly come apart in my hands.”

After the movie, I clarified this with my husband, and we decided that, actually, I routinely fall apart because I suffer from delusions of intense guilt. I’m not a murderer, but I relate to the crushing guilt and the sense that everything’s closing in on me. Near the end, I always begin to realize that if I could just figure out how, I could fix it all, but I can’t! I can’t!

DiCaprio makes Ernest’s torment palpable. I’m always impressed by his ability to radiate emotion. (I also find it remarkable that he’s so good at drawing his mouth into an actual down-turned frown. Most humans don’t look sad with such a clearly defined frown.) He grimaces up a storm in this film. He should get an Oscar nomination, too. It’s a powerful performance.

De Niro is also great here playing the kind of role people usually prefer for him. (His love of wacky comedy is so endearing, and I’ve enjoyed many of his comedic performances, too. But he’s unusually gifted at bringing self-possessed menace.) I would never have imagined casting him as a cattle rancher from Oklahoma, but he’s got the character down. Ernest’s uncle, William “King” Hale is a quietly charismatic sociopath. He’s completely convincing as a man comfortable with money, power, and the esteem of his neighbors and equally comfortable with the idea of murdering said neighbors for long-term financial gain. We get a fascinating character study with Hale, too. Why does he assume he can get away with everything? But he almost does! The wrong actor in this part would ruin the movie. We have to believe people would respect and follow this man, despite the increasingly conspicuous trail of bodies leading right to his front door.

I truly enjoyed getting a closer look at this slice of history (so much so that I’m reading David Grann’s book now). (It’s highly readable, compelling non-fiction.) In our childhood, both my husband and I lived in Oklahoma. We weren’t near Fairfax in Osage Territory. I lived in Edmond. He lived in Bug Tussle. I did go to School of the Osage the year before when I lived in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri. We were the Osage Indians, and my friend next-door’s brother tunneled into the Indian Burial Cave down the street from the woods behind our house. At least, that’s what he told us. He would often emerge from the tunnel with bones. Hopefully that was a tourist trap and not an authentic burial cave!

Robbie Robertson’s score and the film’s soundtrack also jumped out at me. Based on the small bit of the book I’ve read this morning, I’d say the screenplay is exceptionally well adapted, too.

Best Scene:
I like the film’s distanced conclusion. It’s a nice way of wrapping up. For one thing, it draws attention to the fact that for us, this has all been a bit of light entertainment. We see how distanced the characters in the final scene are from the vivid reality of the real events. You watch the radio play and think, “This is inadequate. This is just contrived entertainment, but those people’s suffering was real.” Yeah.

My husband remarked on how much he liked a much earlier scene when Ernest goes to dinner at Mollie’s house while he’s courting her. The moment of silence she observes during the powerful rainstorm makes an impression—particularly because the sounds of a rainstorm repeat during the credits, queuing us to sit in silence in deference to the events we’ve just (vicariously) experienced.

I personally loved the scene when Ernest goes upstairs to rant at his wife after he’s sent the doctors away because of her paranoia. This scene really resonated with me because I identified with Mollie’s misgivings and Ernest’s frustration.

“I really identify with the wife,” I said in the car on the way home. “The person she’s looking to for protection is the person who’s hurting her.”

“Um…I don’t know that I’m flattered by that,” my husband balked.

Quickly, I explained, “No what I mean is, my own mental health sometimes makes me dependent and temporarily helpless. That’s my nightmare, the fear that the people I’m trusting are not trustworthy. Because if the people I’m looking to for help are trying to hurt me, I’m trapped with no hope of escape.”

This situation should resonate with any woman, especially one with health problems.  

I like that bedroom scene visually, too, how the couple is split by the architectural design of the room. They’re in the same room, but thanks to the lines of the house, and the postures they assume, they’re clearly not united.

Best Action Sequence:
When Mollie’s sister Anna (Cara Jade Myers) returns from a night on the town and wanders through the house drunk and volatile, I kept thinking to myself, “They live in a nightmare!”

It’s like a horror movie in that house. Everyone in the family seems vaguely aware that Anna is marked for death—even Anna!

I kept thinking, “This is like Rosemary’s Baby! How can they live like that?” because on some level, they all sort of know they’re not safe. And yet, there they are at home, having breakfast.

For some reason, an incredibly outspoken, racist white couple are sitting at the table , loudly insulting everyone, including the children.

(Who are these people? I kept wondering. The book identifies them as Ernest’s aunt and uncle.)

What’s most disturbing about this scene is that this is a moment from a normal day, what happens before Anna has been murdered. I’m glad I don’t live in that house!

Best Scene Visually:
The image I remember most is Leonardo DiCaprio’s cartoon frown, its clean line and downturned corners. The other scene that jumps out at me are all the oil derricks as Ernest initially approaches his uncle’s house by car. I remember these particularly because my husband leaned over to me and whispered, “I’m in the movie!”

I was so confused because I thought he was comparing himself to Henry Roan (William Belleau) when, in fact, he was just punning on his name (Derrick).

Now that I’ve read the beginning of Grann’s book, I also find the initial montage of various Osage oil millionaires dressed in finery, living in luxury quite well done.

The Negatives:
This entire movie is DiCaprio’s character slowly murdering all of his wife’s relatives. She kind of knows he’s doing it, but she doesn’t want to believe it. He also only kind of knows he’s doing it and doesn’t want to believe it, either.

Ordinarily I love evil schemes (in fiction), but I had a hard time getting behind this one (probably because it’s non-fiction).

“I had a hard time taking Robert De Niro seriously,” I said to my husband after the film.  “Doesn’t he realize they’re all going to die?”

Perplexed, he responded sensibly, “He wants to kill them faster to get their oil money.”

“No,” I explained, “I mean he also is going to die.” He’s an eighty-year-old man! Who would think, “I know what to do with my finite life. I’ll ‘inconspicuously’ (wink) murder thirty people.” What is the point of this scheme? I understand it will make him rich. But he’s already rich!

I get that he wants the headrights. I understand that oil money is a great thing to keep in the family. It guarantees generational wealth, making your descendants rich forever. But he’s also willing to murder his descendants! So…?

Maybe I think of mortality too much lately since my mom died. Maybe it’s middle age. I’m always like, “Don’t you know we’re all basically already dead?”  The human lifespan is so finite. Apparently, my new philosophy is, “Sun’s gonna burn out someday, and I can’t wait.” (That’s the end of a song my sister used to love!)

With some distance, this scheme is absurd. There’s dark humor in it. (“How can I be the richest man in town? I know! I’ll kill everyone else!”) The concept is so parody-friendly. (Can’t you just imagine people dropping dead left and right all around Robert De Niro as he puzzles vaguely, “Hmm. How did that happen? Another freak accident! More bad luck!”) Obviously, the real-life situation is a grave atrocity. But even this movie kind of plays it for comedy—not the mass slaughter of innocent people but the fact that De Niro’s character thinks he’ll indefinitely get away with it. There’s a moment when he’s talking to Jesse Plemons (as federal law man Tom White) in the barber shop, and Plemons reacts like, “Hmm…well then! It’s cute you expect me to believe that!” There’s a scene with Louis Cancelmi featuring adopting wealthy children that definitely does not shy away from dark humor. There’s a joke hiding in the story of his crime about the ridiculously blatant murders these guys have been committing in Oklahoma. (The punchline is darker, more like a gut punch. They’ve been getting away with it. They’ve had no reason to suspect they won’t always get away with it.)

Even the townspeople deliberately turning a blind eye are starting to tell De Niro things like, “Listen you’ve got to stop blowing up entire houses with dynamite. It’s not a great look. You look about as innocent as Mary Queen of Scots after the death of Lord Darnley.” His murder spree almost becomes comical (in a horrible way). You start to wonder how he’s gotten away with it for so long.

Now, obviously, I know how he gets away with it so long. It’s good old fashioned American racism. That’s probably why he’s doing it, too. It isn’t just that he wants the oil money. He wants the Osage not to have it. And he’s not the only one. Like they’re all on the Orient Express, prominent townspeople start concocting ridiculous stories once a real detective unexpectedly shows up. They never expected to be questioned. They thought they were wronging people who don’t matter. Even when challenged, they refuse to give serious answers. They clearly don’t view the Osage as fully human.

This isn’t a fault with the movie, but it may become frustrating after 3 ½ hours. If you’re dragged to this movie against your will, after 3 ½ hours these ridiculous shenanigans may start to seem very tiring. Also, if you don’t enjoy seeing women endure psychological torture and men endure self-inflicted psychological torture, then Killers of the Flower Moon might feel too torturous to you. That’s what it delivers for 3 ½ hours, slow burning psychological torture. If you’re not in the mood for that, pick another day to watch it.

The film wouldn’t be half as good if DiCaprio’s character’s motives weren’t so muddled and conflicting. The level of cognitive dissonance he must need to get through his day is staggering. If he didn’t love his wife, he’d make more sense. But he does love her. So he’s in perpetual agony, and the movie becomes an interesting character study of self-inflicted psychological torture.  

In some ways, Killers of the Flower Moon reminds me a bit of Little Big Man, a movie I watched and puzzled over for the first time earlier this year. In that film, Dustin Hoffman’s character keeps flip-flopping back and forth, changing lives from European settler to member of the tribe. DiCaprio’s character does that, too, but all at the same time. It’s like he’s living two lives at once, instead of alternately. He wants to protect his wife and kill her. He gives her life saving medicine and poison. All at once. He’s hard to figure out, so hard that he himself doesn’t even try it!

Overall:
I’d been dying to see any Oscar contender and eager to watch this movie for a while, and Killers of the Flower Moon did not disappoint. Lily Gladstone gives an outstanding, Oscar-worthy performance, and DiCaprio and De Niro are probably Oscar worthy, too, in this well-acted, compelling story of how your marriage can fall apart when you keep persistently murdering your wife’s entire family. On a more serious note, the bit of history we get here is fascinating, haunting, and well presented by Martin Scorsese.