In this film, Martin Scorsese tells of a little-known chapter in recent US history. The famously photographed three-and-a-half-hour film features a top cast.
The so-called Osage murders were the fledgling FBI’s first major case. The US federal police had to deal with a whole series of mysterious deaths: between 1918 and 1931, at least 60 members of the indigenous Osage Nation tribe were murdered. Director legend Martin Scorsese (“Gangs of New York”) took on the tragic events.
During well over three hours of gripping entertainment, Scorsese talks about it – of course not without bringing two of the greatest US actors to his side: Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. The film premieres this Friday on the Apple TV streaming service.
Oil boom – wealth – greed
The Osage acquired territory in Oklahoma in 1870. In the 1890s, large deposits of petroleum were discovered on this piece of land, now Osage County. The indigenous community gained great wealth, which, as Scorsese vividly shows, aroused the darkest desires in the white majority society. This includes William Hale (Robert De Niro).
In the midst of the oil boom, he resides in the city of Fairfax and acts as a benefactor and friend to the indigenous people. His greed for wealth drives him into an extremely perfidious game – into which he also involves his nephew Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), a sometimes naive war returnee.
Hale convinces his nephew to marry a woman who belongs to the Osage Nation: Mollie Kyle, played brilliantly by Lily Gladstone. The first murder soon occurs.
Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio
If you look back over Scorsese’s film work, which spans more than half a century, you will find his two most important actors: De Niro and DiCaprio. For a long time, De Niro was the ultimate Scorsese actor. Mark-shattering performances like those in “Taxi Driver” or “Raging Bull” have left a deep mark on cinema history.
And yet, at least since “The Departed”, the question has been raised as to whether DiCaprio can inherit De Niro. The many scenes together – at one point De Niro’s character stands hunched over, looking small next to DiCaprio as Ernest – seem like the final handover of the season. And not just because De Niro has often appeared in some mediocre comedies over the last ten to 15 years.
Golden Globe for Lily Gladstone
This time, another acting performance is Oscar-worthy: Lily Gladstone’s slow, almost meditative, often ironic and charmingly warm performance; she recently won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Film. Gladstone, who herself has indigenous roots and grew up on a reservation, gives her acting a dignity that makes this cinematic nod to the Osage Nation a congenial individual achievement. An individual achievement, and that cannot be overestimated, that stands out from an ensemble of big names in US cinema (including John Lithgow).
And yet, one can also smile in this work, which is so tragic for a long time: for example, when DiCaprio’s long-legendary forehead wrinkle seems to dig a few millimeters deeper into his face.
Again and again, Scorsese and cameraman Rodrigo Prieto (“Barbie”) contrast in a revealing way the not consistently but repeatedly undignified behavior of the whites towards the indigenous people. When DiCaprio simply puts a cigarette in his mouth, the wonderfully elegant Lily Gladstone sits opposite him. Your cigarette doesn’t just sit in your mouth; she pulls on a fancy mouthpiece.
There is just as much symbolism in this cigarette holder as in another scene with Gladstone and DiCaprio: During a thunderstorm, she admonishes him in her inimitable way to simply remain silent out of respect. Also telling are the many times in which Scorsese and co-screenwriter Eric Roth tell Ernest Burkhart how much he cares about money (he even compares this love to that of his wife).
The greed for more
In one of the many scenes that focus entirely on the two characters of DiCaprio and De Niro, the latter once again speaks to his nephew’s conscience. After asking him how he feels about religion and what he thinks about the Holy Scripture, De Niro harshly brings his protégé back to the bloody soil of the United States of America, which is quite greedy here. With the words that miracles like those described in the Bible no longer exist.
Martin Scorsese, as he has proven not only with his benchmark mafia epics (“Casino”), is fascinated by the greed for more. “I feel drawn to this topic,” said Scorsese in a statement released on the occasion of the film. Like the majority of his films, this one does not shed a good light on a white US culture obsessed with power and greed.
Killers of the Flower Moon, USA 2023, 206 min., FSK from 12, by Martin Scorsese, with Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio