They are playing together for the first time! Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio face off in front of Martin Scorsese’s camera for Killers Of The Flower Moon, a poignant 3h26 fresco discovered at the Cannes Film Festival. The film produced by Apple Studios will not be streamed on Apple TV+ until a little later. Until then, let’s take advantage of being able to discover it in the cinema.
The director tries his hand at a western for the first time to tell the story of how the Osage Native Americans were robbed of their oil-rich lands by unscrupulous whites in Oklahoma in the 1920s.
“The subject was not who is guilty but who was not,” explained Martin Scorsese during the Cannes press conference. The filmmaker draws his inspiration from a book by David Grann, a fascinating investigation into these little-known facts in France. Ernest (Leonardo Di Caprio), a naive veteran of the First World War, and his uncle William (Robert De Niro), his rancher uncle with mafia-style actions, allow the stunned viewer to understand how uninhibited greed led to this human disaster.
A story of love and betrayal
Respect for the Osage word was a founding element of this very beautiful film for which the creators worked in conjunction with those first concerned. “I didn’t want to adopt the white point of view,” insists Martin Scorsese. It delves into the cruel reality of what these people suffered thanks to the character of Ernest’s indigenous wife, brilliantly played by Lily Gladstone. This abused woman is the real heroine of the film and we are already talking about her for the Oscars.
“It is the story of the tragedy of love and the betrayal of the indigenous people by the whites. This is the choice we made to tell this story,” insists Martin Scorsese. The young woman’s ordeal breaks the heart but her resilience illuminates the whole of a very dense film which develops with such magnitude that we do not see the time passing.
A remarkable respect
The filmmaker takes his time with remarkable respect for his subject and breathtaking sequences. Osage rituals are revealed with great accuracy. A rain of black gold leaves one speechless by its beauty while almost touching on the wealth that caused the downfall of the Native Americans. It is great cinema that Martin Scorsese offers us at the same time as a reflection on American History sublimated by a score we sometimes recognize the hand of the late Robbie Robertson.