Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

A couple of years ago, I wrote up some reflections about the eradication of Greenwood, the "Black Wall Street", of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Part of this was inspired by the conversation brought up by my friend Eric Stover who worked on the Nova program devoted to that tragedy. I'd be less than honest if some of the writing wasn't also inspired by the streaming series Watchmen, a particularly moving mini-series with its roots in the event and which bring it to the forefront of cultural dialog and resurrecting it from being lost to history.

The Osage Murders began in 1921 and continued through 1925, wherein 60 people (at least, the number may be 150 or higher) - mostly Osage tribal members, were murdered. As happens with the marginalized and disenfranchised in the United States, the wheels of justice barely turned at all, until the Osage people simply couldn't take it anymore. Some people may balk: but the Osage were wealthy! Oil had been discovered on their land and they were the wealthiest people in the world per capita. That is correct; but being Indians, they found access to their wealth restricted in many cases and were appointed guardians to ensure that their earning would be well-managed. Mostly by white men.

The Osage were able to get around pernicious legislation that forced tribal nations to break up their land into piecemeal allotments when, upon being forced out of their ancestral land in Kansas and moving to Oklahoma, the Osage bought a block of 1.5 million acres and apportioned 657 acres to each tribe member. The nation also held the mineral rights of the land and ensured that each Osage was granted an inheritable "headright" as a share of that wealth. When oil was discovered on their land, each tribe member became very, very rich. This was a matter of consternation to Oklahomans who weren't members of the nation. 

It also didn't stop non-Osage legislators from instituting guardianship under the patronizingly racist guise that "Injuns" were too childlike  or mentally incompetent to understand how to spend their money. Naturally, this opened up a process whereby their often-white "guardians" could enrich themselves and were even able to sell land belong to their charges. (1)

In other circumstances, whites could marry Osage. Mostly men marrying Osage women, and once married were able to inherit the "headright". This is the background, briefly, of the world that we enter in Martin Scorsese's latest masterpiece - and it is a masterpiece - Killers of the Flower Moon, based on the book by David Gann.

Scorsese wisely elected to focus on the Osage and what was being done to them by their "guardians" and demonstrates how systemic the conniving and manipulation was, the thoroughness of it all. In interviews, Gann noted that while two men did time for the premeditated killings of Osage men and women and anyone who might be found inconvenient, many others who gained from these years of abuse and murder were never prosecuted, let alone brought up on charges. 

As for the two who were convicted and sentenced for their acts, it was a perfect match of a cunning uncle and his dim-witted nephew. William King Hale (Robert De Niro) was known as the "King of Osage Hill." He was well-regarded by the Osage people, spoke the language and presented himself as an upright pillar of the community of Fairfax. His nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) a World War One veteran with not many prospects in life came to Fairfax looking for employment and found it, driving a cab around time and most specifically and tellingly, his regular passenger Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman whose sisters had all married white men.

In the film, King counsels Ernest on the fortune available in marrying an Osage woman and in the film's context, that doesn't really form the basis of what Ernest feels for Mollie; he is genuinely "sweet on her." That said, King sees prospects and sets into motion a sequence of some of the ugliest, vilest executions a human being could be capable of. It goes without saying that he himself didn't commit any of the acts that lead to the death of Molly's sisters and their families. He didn't have to. 

He had convinced Ernest that the Osage are simple people, good but too simple to make it on their own, of poor constitution and not capable of grasping the depth of what their growth really meant. Ernest makes no bones about loving money, "almost as much as my wife", and doesn't seem to think much of killing or having other people killed at his uncle's behest. (2)

The film begins with a ceremony of tribal leaders offering up a prayer to Wa-kon-ta/-da and lamenting the eventual demise of the tribe, singing a mournful elegy of the effects of the loss of language, culture, and existence to the encroachment of the white race around them. The scene shifts to oil bubbling up and gushing through the land and then another shift to a series of executions of Osage people with Molly's voiceover calmly noting that each one went uninvestigated.

The film kicks into gear with DiCaprio's Ernest showing up in Fairfax and it's established early on that his uncle, while apparently kindly, may be more complicated than he lets on. The role is a tour de force for De Niro, who between this and The Irishman, is knocking out yet another fine late era performance for his pal Marty. I can't say the same for Leonard, quite. Ernest, as written is too underwritten, but also, DiCaprio seems to be relying on a fair amount of technique that shows through in almost every sequence. 

That the real Burkhart wasn't the brightest of bulbs has been established, but it's difficult to feel as though he actually is in love with Mollie. Acting against De Niro is where the more actory elements come to the fore; in scenes with Gladstone, the performance is less guarded but mitigated by what we know of Ernest at different points. Gladstone, by the way, is the MVP here. 

Hers is one of the stillest works of acting I've ever seen and yet, it speaks volumes, repeatedly. Mollie doesn't say much, but when she does, you lean in to listen. Her sister Anna (Cara Jade Meyers, owning every scene she's in) is the wild one and their mother's favorite and Reta (JaNae Collins) feels the most stable of the children. Their youngest sister Minnie (Jillian Dion) died from "the wasting illness" which was a regular dosage of poison provided by the Shoun brothers, the town's doctors.

Minnie is Hale's first victim, her headright being inherited by the surviving sisters. Next, Anna is assassinated; and eventually, Reta will die with her husband, Minnie's widower Bill Smith, in an explosion. Along the way, Ernest shows no signs of remorse or even quite grasping why he is murdering his wife with "medicine" to be added to her insulin "to slow her down" according to King. It's in moments of reflection when you realize how thick Ernest is that it stretches credibility he could be so gullible. But here we are.

Mollie's mother Lizzy (Tantoo Cardinal, also delivering a quiet, if seething performance) dies after having a vision of an owl and upon her death, enters the land of her ancestors, greeted by people I assume to be her parents and husband. It's a quiet, moving scene that serves to point up the tawdriness of the world she's left behind, poisoned and poisoning her family, her people.

Eventually, the tribal elders recognize that something has to be done. They recognize that the Osage are being systematically targeted and that they will petition President Coolidge to get an investigation going. In another insult to be added to so very many injuries, it costs the Osage Nation $20, 000 (roughly $300,000 in today's currency) to pay for justice to be rendered. The Oklahoma legislature and justice system wouldn't help, the Bureau of Indian Affairs proved useless. Earlier, a non-Osage oilman was elected to go to Washington to enlist federal assistance to solve the crimes and was stabbed twenty time before getting to do so. Mollie had hired a private investigator who was summarily executed by two men, one of whom was her husband, Ernest.

Bureau of Investigation agent Tom White (the always remarkable Jesse Plemons) arrives in town with a team and quickly surmises the breadth of conspiracy across the number of people involved. Mostly, he zeroes in on King and his nephew. Upon arriving to testify against his uncle, the trial is disrupted when Hale's lawyer (Brendon Fraser, killing it once again) grandstands and states that Ernest is also his client and that he, the attorney has not been granted access to him. It's a patent line of bullshit, but Ernest tells the judge and the court that he'll hear him out. 

In a meeting back at King's, the lawyer Hamilton, dresses Ernest down for going against his uncle, for killing him. Is this what he wants? He's been manipulated by the feds! Why he doesn't even know how they're going to doublecross him! He later tells Mollie that he's not going to testify, that he's going to be arrested but for her not to worry, he'll be out soon. He tells White he's not going to testify and is placed under arrest. 

Ernest's heart changes when he learns that his daughter Anna has died of whooping cough and after the funeral he's allowed to attend, tells Mollie of his decision. He promises he won't let King anywhere near her. She asks him if he feels better to have released all of his secrets, but exits the room when refuses to admit that he was slowly poisoning her. 

The scene in the jailhouse between De Niro and DiCaprio is a remarkable set-piece of acting, perhaps the second best two hander of a scene between De Niro and another actor after his and Pacino's meeting over coffee in Heat. It's one of the few moments when Dicarprio lets his acting guard down and just does the work.

The film's wrap-up takes place as a staged radio program. In most films, this would be a series of captions telling us what had happened to each of the people involved. Hale and Burkhart were both sentenced to life; Burkhart was paroled at the age of 72 for being a model prisoner and Burkhart also received an early release; both of these despite protests to the parole board by the Osage tribe. Mollie divorced Ernest and remarried, dying at fifty in 1937. Her obituary didn't mention the Osage murders.

As mentioned above, no one else was convicted. Hale's son Byron was released for turning state's evidence against one of the murderers, the doctors weren't convicted because of lack of evidence, and so on. The film ends, powerfully, with a modern day drum circle of Osage tribal members. The credits roll against a soundscape of rainfall and sounds of the forest, of the land, nocturnal and enveloping.

That this is a great film is not really open to contest, to my mind. That it is an important film  just as much, if not more so. It's a tough watch - not because of anything visceral onscreen - but owing more to the portrait it paints of this country's history as another example of what many, likely most, white people don't want to admit or confront honestly. We have only to look at how certain states are banning books, particularly those that deal with racism, slavery, and oppression of marginal communities by, frankly, the white community, particularly those with a great deal of power and wealth.

I'd argue, too, that this is very much of a piece with two on the face of it, disparate Scorsese films: Kundun and Goodfellas. The former, while centered around the biography of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is equally a cutting observation of and investigation into the dynamics of fear, intimidation and subjugation of a smaller group in their own land by a massive, imperialist machine built on terror and exploitation. With Goodfellas, in addition to hosting another excellent De Niro performance, the dynamics of his use of personal power and threat are very similar; Jimmy Conway and William King Hale would no doubt recognize each in the other to chilling effect (and woe to anyone around them who might cross them). But in the latter film, as well, we see the devastation brought about by gangsterism as surely as in Killers of the Flower Moon.

Two other elements are more like characters themselves in the film. Robbie Robertson's score is one of the finest works he's ever composed. It is frequently present, a heartbeat throughout that reminds us of the indigenous lives, the people, whose fears and struggles are being both ignored and exploited and yet, who continue to find ways to fight this unseen enemy in their midst. It costs them, but in America, those who can pay get justice. The score also guides us, not in the sense of telling us what to feel; often, that's the last thing that enters the mind. It's kind of like following a river that's telling us this tale of tragedy and ugliness. At the same time, using percussion and a spacious guitar that weaves in and out in almost arabesque figures, there's a sinuous sense of life, of triumph. 

Then there's Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography. Too often we think of filmic composition in terms of placement, of spaces the characters exist in in order to act out. Very often, though often overlooked, what we see is a psychological space, it is the interior experience rendered visible, if not necessarily external. This is very much the case with more oneiric cinema masters like Lynch or Cronenberg, but Scorsese - not so unlike Hitchcock - has a sense that the world we discuss is only the world that we are in within each of our experiences. In this sense, a film is an example of how "perception is a controlled hallucination" (3)

Sadly, this is Robertson's last work for film. It's a fitting end to a great life lived in the service of music and for that matter, one served in the support of indigenous tribes of Turtle Island.

Prieto, following up his work on Barbie, should likely nab another nomination for this or that. A win would be well deserved. It's assuredly his time.

Lastly, and I don't know why her name isn't brought up more, but Thelma Schoonmaker deserves a mention with each film she edits. Her work with Scorsese goes back to 1967's Who's That Knocking at the Door? and even though they wouldn't work together again till Raging Bull, she's been Marty's steady collaborator ever since. Her work on non-Scorsese films is illustrative of her mastery. Most recently, Learning to Drive, for me was a revelation. And of course, early on, her work on 1970's Woodstock may owe as much to her as director Michael Woodleigh.

Works like Killers of the Flower Moon are often consigned to the Eat Your Greens realm of cinema and while there's an element of truth to that, that's not all they are nor should that be exclusively with how they should be approached. There are plenty of "important message" films, but those are the usual Oscar bait that people forget about after they've been recognized with little gold men. Scorsese remains a vital interrogator and portraitist of this country warts and all, but also with a deep sense of humanity in how it just tries to make sense of whatever it encounters, often failing but sometimes making it through on dumb luck. His dissections of toxic masculinity, colonialist attitudes, and the ongoing search for redemption - be it driven by his more Catholic leanings or just a deep humanist sympathy for his characters - render each film worthwhile, at least, and because he's such a damned good storyteller, very often, almost always, entertaining (even if occasionally demanding more concentration and awareness than others).

Notes

1. Blakemore. "In 1921, Congress went even further to specify that any person with Osage blood under 21 years of age, in addition to anyone who was half or full Osage, must prove their competency or have a state-court-appointed guardian assume management of their finances. Even the suspicion of irresponsibility was enough for the court to designate a white guardian with the right to disperse an Osage’s money, charge them steep administrative fees—and pocket any funds above a threshold of a $1,000 per quarter. As a result, writes historian Dennis McAuliffe, 600 guardians took $8 million in surplus funds alone with no oversight and no accountability over the course of just three years."

2. See Daugherty for a fuller account of Hale's involvement.

3. See Seth.

Bibliography/Further Reading

Blakemore, Erin. "The true story of the Osage murders—and why so many remain unsolved". National Geographic. September 15, 2023. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/osage-murders-killers-of-the-flower-moon

Daugherty, Greg. ?William Hale’s Brutal Role in the Osage Murders". History. October 20, 2023. https://www.history.com/news/william-k-hale-osage-murders.

Seth, Anil K. "The Real Problem". Aeon Essays. 2 November 2016. Retrieved October 27, 2023.  https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one.