We’re a month out from Killers of the Flower Moon‘s theatrical bow in the United States, and by all accounts, the western crime epic is textbook Scorsese through and through. Robert De Niro? Check. Remarkably compelling and hard-to-swallow themes of humanity and its capacity for evil and depravity? Check. Near-unanimous critical acclaim at the time of writing? Very big check.
The film’s backdrop is 1920s Oklahoma, a time when members of the Osage, a Native American tribe, were being mysteriously murdered after a surplus of oil was discovered on their land, prompting one J. Edgar Hoover and seasoned lawman Tom White to investigate conspirator William Hale, whose nephew Ernest Burkhart found himself in a deep, complex relationship with an Osage woman named Mollie.
The film as we’ll all come to know it is about the Osage nation, and we have leading man Leonardo DiCaprio to thank in part for that. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, DiCaprio divulged the very big problem that he and others involved with the film identified in the original draft of the script: the Osage story wasn’t being told. That needed to change.
We weren’t immersed in the Osage story. There was this tiny, small scene between Mollie and Ernest that provoked such emotion in us at the reading, and we just started to penetrate into what that relationship was, because it was so twisted and bizarre and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
DiCaprio’s sentiment echoes that of the film’s helmsman, with Scorsese having heavily consulted the Osage community throughout the making of Killers of the Flower Moon in order to do their story the justice it deserved, especially after he too expressed dissatisfaction with the initial, “police procedural”-esque draft of the script, as the filmmaker put it.
Beyond the more sincere approach to the Osage perspective seemingly resulting in a Best Picture frontrunner, the final cut of Killers of the Flower Moon could be quite the riposte to Hollywood’s disgraceful history with Native American people; that particular journey of rectification is far from over, of course, but a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction.
Killers of the Flower Moon hits theaters on October 20, and will land on its permanent home of Apple TV+ at a yet-to-be-determined date.
(featured image: Paramount Pictures)
