Butler's Cinema Scene

Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio

“KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON” My rating: B (In theaters)

306 minutes | MPAA rating: R

More than any film I’ve seen in a decade, Martin Scorsese’s “Killer of the Flower Moon” has left me at a loss for words.

Sometimes that’s a good thing, suggesting a cinematic experience so overwhelming that it defies easy summation.

In this case it means I left the film with mixed reactions. It’s taken days to sort them out and I’m still struggling to come to a neatly encapsulated conclusion.

The setup:

“Killers…” is a lightly fictionalized version of David Grann’s superb nonfiction study of the notorious Osage murders of the 1920s.  With the discovery of oil in Oklahoma, members of the Osage tribe who had been settled on this presumably worthless land became overnight millionaires.  

This made them targets for predatory whites who often married Osage women.  Frequently those women— and other members of their clans — died under mysterious or outright murderous circumstances, with the oil rights reverting to their white husbands.  It took a major investigation by the fledgling FBI to uncover a cabal of conspirators behind the murders of at least 30 tribal members.

Scorsese’s film (co-written with Eric Roth) is noteworthy in that it isn’t really about solving a crime (the first federal agent doesn’t show up until more than two hours into the 3 1/2-hour film, and the audience knows who the bad guys are almost from the get-go).  Its focus is split between one particular marriage. and a study of unapologetic corruption.

After serving in the Great War Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives in Oklahoma to work for his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), the most powerful white man living in the Osage Nation.

Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio

Hale is a mover and shaker who has been among the Osage for so long he speaks their language fluently.  He advises tribal leaders and maintains that the Osage are the finest people on the planet. But beneath his benevolent paternalism there’s sinister intent.

At his uncle’s urging, the slow-witted and morally anchorless Ernest marries Mollie (Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman who, for all of her family’s wealth, is a nurturing, down-to-earth individual.  They start a family.

But little by little Ernest is drawn into his uncle’s manipulative world. Early on he participates in the armed robbery of a wealthy Indian couple; before long he’s a middleman setting up the assassinations of individuals fingered by Hale. Among the targets are his own in-laws.

The yarn is thick with moral ambiguity. For even as he does his uncle’s murderous bidding, Ernest remains desperately in love with his wife. At some point he’s going to have to choose between love and his white family.

The film’s recreation of life in Oklahoma during this period is astonishingly authentic.  Tribal customs, language and attitudes have been scrupulously researched and depicted.  Some of the long shots of oil derricks and oil pools pocking the landscape are epic (Rodrigo Prieto is the cinematographer).  Costuming and set decoration are impeccable.  The late Robbie Robertson has created a haunting minimalist musical score heavy on native drums rhythmically thudding like a heartbeat.

My hangup is the film’s emotional neutrality.  I get it, intellectually.  But I felt more an observer than a participant.

Possibly it’s best to see the film without having read the book.  That way the perfidy of the “killers” comes as a shocking revelation with attendant moral revulsion. Maybe I knew too much going into the experience.

More problematic is the focus on Ernest, a stupid, easily manipulated oaf. As played by DeCaprio he is resoundingly unempathetic, a spineless sort whose only redeeming quality is that he grows to love his wife despite his many sins against her family. (I can’t recall another major actor so willing to alienate his character from the audience, so there’s that.)

Were “Killers…” only, say, two hours long, Scorsese’s sheer filmmaking bravado might well compensate for our having to spend so much time with this thick hick. But the film’s butt-numbing length stretches matters out while diluting the dramatic impact — the movie’s trailers are more effective in this regard than the film itself.

Scorsese and Roth find some grim humor in the killers’ desperate machinations as the net closes on them (Jesse Plemons portrays the main Fed doggedly digging into the murders), but the film is largely humorless.

The saving grace in all this is Gladstone, a Native American actress whose most compelling previous performance was in Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Woman” from 2016. Her Mollie becomes the moral/emotional center of the film, a woman radiating empathy, quiet dignity, intelligence and a sort of stoic resignation as life piles on one tragedy after another. It’s damn near impossible to explain what she does here…it’s a kind of soulfulness rarely seem on the screen.

At the other end of the spectrum is DeNiro’s William Hale, a villain with a breathtaking ability to compartmentalize the conflicting aspects of his life.  In public he’s everybody’s uncle and friend; behind closed doors Hale becomes an amoral master manipulator with an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power. Anyone smarter than the thick-headed Ernest would recognize his pervasive malevolence right off the bat.

Advance word on “Killers of the Flower Moon” has the film pegged as a masterpiece, perhaps the highlight of Scorsese’s illustrious career.

Well, it’s good. It’s got its moments.  But in my opinion not enough to fill 3 1/2 hours.

| Robert W. Butler

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