Black Gold and Death Rising

 KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2023)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

America has always been the place where one could accumulate wealth and riches beyond their wildest dreams. When the Osage nation found oil on their Oklahoma tribal land spewing from the ground, they inherited wealth and became the richest people in America per capita in the 1920's. So rich that the greediest of all white men had to come and collect because, you know, how dare these Native Americans mine their land for their own livelihood. But this is not the story of sharing the wealth, which would have been irksome enough, but rather killing the natives to collect it all and, most troubling, within their inner circle. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a riveting, disquieting, indignant film about a forgotten historical event that deserves full attention and introspection. 

Right from the powerful and moving opening sequence of the ceremonial burial of a peace pipe, a thunderous sound emerges from under the ground. It is oil as it springs like a fountain and the Osage members, who witness this, dance around it in one of Scorsese's most poetic scenes ever. Of course such celebration will come to a standstill. A WWI vet named Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio, playing the most weak-willed character of his career) arrives in Oklahoma to live and work for his uncle, cattle rancher William Hale (Robert De Niro). Hale tells Ernest about the wealth of the region he lives in, that money has come to their land and the "Reds" have become wealthy. Meanwhile, Ernest takes a job as a driver for an Osage tribe member, Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), who lives with her largely silent and ill mother (Tantoo Cardinal). Mollie's three sisters live nearby, married to white men and all of them have become wealthy thanks to oil. But there is more than oil brewing in the settlement Oklahoma town of Gray Horse. Practically all the women suffer from a "wasting illness" known of course as sugar diabetes. They need insulin which they don't have immediate access to. Money is not accessible unless managed by white guardians. When Mollie decides at one point to go on a train trip to D.C., she needs to ask for travel money from a white guardian.  

Ernest falls in love with Mollie and their love scenes are some of the loveliest Scorsese has ever filmed - these two lovebirds go at it in a car like teenagers. Hale wants Ernest to marry an Osage, and Mollie is something of a jackpot. Unfortunately, the murder rate has been rising fast in this land as Osage natives are killed left and right. Some are declared suicides, others are poisoned. Hale is orchestrating a Murder Inc. in this town, 30 murders and counting. That also includes Mollie's sisters such as the drunk and blunt as a whistle Anna (Cara Jade Myers) who is shot in the head. The other sister, Reta, dies in a house explosion! Why are these murders committed? The murders are committed for Hale and company to acquire the headrights to the oil earnings and become fabulously wealthy themselves. This is greed on a scale almost unheard of in as far as Native American history is concerned.

"Killers of the Flower Moon" flows like a fluid tone poem with peaks and valleys, though there is a somber undercurrent that is further magnified by the incessant slow drum beat of a score by the late Robbie Robertson. It is a feeling of not just inevitability yet also bearing witness to a massacre that has no end in sight. Both the cold manipulations of Hale and the struggling conscience of Ernest Burkhart form the immoral fabric of greedy, powerful white men who more than likely would be jailed for killing a dog than an Osage. Punitive measures lead to limited jail sentences that make you want to scream. Based on the excellent non-fiction book by David Grann, I wanted to scream with every page I read prior to seeing this adaptation. Though the book mainly focuses on the FBI's investigations of these murders (FBI was known, at the time, as simply the Bureau of Investigation spearheaded by J. Edgar Hoover) and Grann's own intuitive investigations as well, the movie instead circles in on Ernest's relationship to Mollie and Hale. Seeing this intimacy between these three characters brings us as close as anybody would want to be to this Reign of Terror.   

"Killers of the Flower Moon" runs at 3.5 hours yet I never felt the length as it could have run on longer. What I did feel was the momentous desperation of watching this Reign of Terror unfold helplessly. Not unlike Scorsese's depiction of cold-blooded executions in "The Irishman," murder has no meaning in these blood-soaked prairie lands and, in this chilling case, these white men think nothing of killing since their only passion is money. Hale is the most frigid villain I have seen in some time whereas Ernest is a weasel who feels love for Mollie and their children yet also a love for that money. Lily Gladstone (a surefire winner for an Oscar) shows us a Mollie who wants to believe that her husband is a good man yet knows that darkness envelops and corrupts everyone. She doesn't easily forgive and, judging by the last scene of this amazing, surreal epic, neither does Scorsese.