I am including heavy spoilers here. So watch Killers of the Flower Moon before reading this- I will be honest, it’s a great movie to watch and discuss!
Martin Scorsese’s new miracle Killers of the Flower Moon landed unexpectedly harder than it should have, and I am saying that in a complimentary way. The movie, that I started watching on Apple TV+ randomly turned out to be a saga that not only well delivered the brutality done to Native Indians but also managed to tie a tale of betrayal, greed, and regret in the thread called love.
I won’t lie, I hate every non-Indian character from the movie. And to think this is the truth of the 19th and 20th centuries makes the movie harder to forget.
Killer of the Flowers Moon is the story of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is a war veteran who returned to live with his uncle, William K. Hale AKA The King of the Osage Hills (Robert De Niro) in the Indian country. The story puts together the murder epidemic that took place on the reservations organized by these Western settlers for the greed of oil money. Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), Ernest Burkhart becomes unwantedly the victim of this greed having to lose her family one after another.
Ernest, her husband, covered himself well with the cloak of righteousness and protector betraying not only the family that took him in, loved him, but also the community that accepted him as a family. Driven by William Hale, Ernest’s actions along with his brother are something that made my blood boil, and I am sure yours will too.
The quiet evil that Leonardo DiCaprio infuses into Ernest’s character makes him a villain you’ll loathe with every fiber of your being.
When Ernest and Mollie’s love started blooming, I found myself clinging to a sliver of hope that perhaps Ernest’s love for Mollie might lead to a redemptive arc—a turning point for the Osage people.
It turns out his love was just a deception to access Mollie’s inheritance, not only hers but also of her sisters. Ernest’s character is not complicated, it’s quite simple that he is entirely evil. Throughout the movie he acts without conscience and tries to play the victim when caught, giving up on his uncle too eventually who was the mastermind behind all the chaos.
Now, apart from the complicated tale of betrayal, Martin’s work here is praiseworthy for its cinematography too. There’s this one particular scene where Ernest witnesses cowboys putting things on fire and his viewpoint is filtered by the layer of smoke giving the frame an apocalyptic hellish visual. That scene and its choreography were something out of the world and could give any movie displaying the hell run for its money.
Another scene I loved was the passing of Mollie’s mother. She is probably the rarest of characters in the movie that dies naturally and in peace. I found her passing most emotional, especially thanks to the touch of her parents and the God coming to take her.
Now, one crucial detail that you might want to know about this movie is, that it’s an actual series of events based on the Novel “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.” by David Grann released in 2017. While the FBI shows up to deliver the climax of the movie, it shows you a gruesome glimpse of the system that existed back then and how justice was a luxury for those who weren’t white.
But this gruesomeness, as disturbing as it is, is also crucial for everybody to know about. And that is why I wanted you to know about Scorcese’s one of the popular new releases if you missed its theatrical runs like me.
