Vintage Sand Episode 49: "Killers of the Flower Moon": It's Just the Way This Is Going

Vintage Sand

When a director of Martin Scorsese’s stature releases a new movie, it’s time to drop everything else and discuss. When last we did this, with "The irishman", our thoughts on that film were mixed; it was a summation of some of the themes and ideas that have characterized Scorsese’s work, and it also contained certain thematic elements of his “spiritual” trilogy of "Last Temptation of Christ", "Kundun" and "Silence". Michael summed it up best when he characterized "The Irishman", and not in a disparaging way, as the film of an old man, an elegy for a passing time. And here we are, once again, with the director in his early 80’s, releasing a very different kind of 3 ½ hour epic that, in our view, not only feels like it could have been made by someone in his 30’s, but encompasses an ambition (both emotional and temporal/spatial) that Scorsese has never attempted before. So we present Episode 49, "Killers of the Flower Moon: It’s Just the Way This Is Going.” As we did with our study of "The Irishman", we divide this episode into two parts. In the first, we discuss the film on its own terms. Here, we disagree somewhat (which always makes for an interesting discussion) on the overall impact of the film; Michael sees it as an unalloyed masterpiece, while John and I, while recognizing its brilliance, express some reservations. We all agreed, for example, that the film’s extended running time was actually insufficient to tell this story, and that it might have been better done as a mini-series or some longer format. Another thing we all agree on is the acting which, down to the smallest roles, is pitch-perfect. This is especially true of the three leads, and of the stunning performance by Lily Gladstone as Mollie in particular. And we all love the opening and the ending of the film, and how brilliantly Scorsese uses the music of Robbie Robertson (who acts as almost a presiding spirit over the film) to underscore the themes and the mood of the piece. We also appreciate how Scorsese, in adapting David Grann’s brilliant book for the screen, shifts Grann’s emphasis on how the Osage murders helped put the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover on the map and puts his focus up, until nearly the very end, on the human side of these horrific crimes, centered around the extraordinarily complex relationship between DiCaprio’s Ernest and Gladstone’s Mollie. Then, as we did with "Irishman", we try to place the film in the context of Scorsese’s body of work, and this is where things get really interesting. While his films often focus on violence, and often depict this violence through elaborate set pieces, Scorsese’s approach is very different here. For one, with the possible exception of the misbegotten "Gangs of New York", Scorsese has never attempted to show organized violence perpetrated over such a long period of time and on such an epic scale. Paradoxically, though, while this film contains countless acts of brutal violence, Scorsese chooses to show them in the most blunt, matter-of-fact way. It’s as though he felt that calling attention to his own craft would only distract from the horrific story he is trying to tell. And this raises the stakes for the director in an unprecedented way. Rather than focusing on the violence between rival gangs, or internecine strife within a gang, Scorsese seems to be saying that the whole of American history is at least in part a kind of gang war, with profit and gain for some happening only with the suffering, exploitation and murder of "othered" peoples across the centuries. It is an exploration of the darkest corners of the American Dream, and we think you will find our conclusions about where it fits in the Scorsese canon to be interesting. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a film of tremendous resonance, depth and contradiction as seen through the eyes of someone who, as an artist, has always been one of the sharpest observers of the complexities of who we are as a people.