'Killers of the Flower Moon' review: Martin Scorsese's methodical, relentless masterpiece
In his latest epic, the legendary director dissects a horrifying tale of greed, racism, and murder
“If you're part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they're going to kill you, doesn't happen that way. There weren't any arguments or curses like in the movies. See, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends, the people who've cared for you all of your life. And they always seem to come at a time that you're at your weakest and most in need of their help.”- Henry Hill, Goodfellas
Martin Scorsese’s 1990 mafia movie about the rise and fall of the gangster Henry Hill is perhaps his most popular and endearing film.
Sure, you could probably make an argument for Taxi Driver, The Departed, or Raging Bull… but could you make an argument against Goodfellas?
It is a lightning bolt of a film, a relentless, repulsively thrilling barrage of its director’s longstanding thematic obsessions:
✅Insatiable greed
✅Reckless ambition
✅Turbulent romance
✅Cold-blooded murder
In its dizzying portrait of Hill (Ray Liotta) and the many people in his orbit, Scorsese never loses sight of the desperation at the core of those obsessions.
Channeling an emotional connection to his material in visual terms is something that his imitators nearly always fall short of, as Manohla Dargis said recently in the New York Times (in a review of the very picture we’ll be discussing shortly).
“When Henry Hill and his girlfriend stroll into the Copacabana during the famous long take in Goodfellas — a blissed-out interlude in which the characters, camera and music flow together — Scorsese isn’t showboating,” she writes. “He is, rather, using the full force of his technique to capture a specific moment in time in all its delirium and voluptuousness.”
There is quite a bit of delirium in Scorsese’s latest, The Killers of the Flower Moon, but next to a movie like Goodfellas, it is decidedly austere.
The movie’s success is in that insistence on denying formal pleasure; in making us laugh and then getting that laughter caught in our throats; in the distance it takes from its carnage.
Killers, based on a 2017 book by David Grann, tells “A True AMERICAN Story” (as the commercials say) of the murders of dozens of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma in the early 20th century.
The murders, systematically carried out by white men who lived among the tribe, ranged from poisonings, shootings, and even blowing up houses. They were flagrant and methodical, targeting the tribe and anyone who got too close to investigating the mysterious deaths.
Why?
✅Insatiable greed
You see, oil was discovered on Osage land. Killers begins with this discovery, with what some might say is a whole ocean of oil shooting out of the ground as men dance around the spurt. Black gold covers their bodies, and their slowed-down writhing allows us to see the sun glinting off the liquid.
It’s beautiful, in its way. And of course, it doesn’t last.
✅Reckless ambition
I don’t know if you guys knew this, but America is a pretty racist country. To this day, even!
On tribal land, many of the Osage do not have financial independence and require a white guardian’s permission to access their own fortunes.
An early moment shows Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone, a quietly confident revelation) sitting stoically as a white man questions her over her spending.
Mollie is a study in stillness and composure being slowly chipped away at. Throughout this gargantuan movie (yes, it is 3.5 hours), this initial indignity will seem almost quaint compared to what happens next.
✅Turbulent romance
After meeting with that guardian, Mollie takes a cab.
This cab driver is Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio, transfixing). A World War I veteran who comes to Oklahoma to be with his family, he is immediately taken by Mollie.
Killers hinges on this romance, on the extent of Ernest’s love and of the unspeakable betrayal and violation of it required to get at his wife and her family’s fortune.
That betrayal is initiated by his uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro, bone-chilling), who encourages him to marry Mollie by hinting at her fortune. Once the union is consummated, the work of killing Mollie’s extended family— her sisters, her brother-in-law, her mother - begins.
✅Cold-blooded murder
The murders are initiated so that Mollie will inherit her relatives’ parts of the family estate, allowing Ernest (and his uncle) to control it by extension.
In other Scorsese films, violence can be portrayed very excitedly. The characters often take great pleasure in violence, and so too does the camera, even as the consequences pile up.
That’s not the case here. Murder is often committed casually in wide shots, and any time there is such a shot the movie trains us to search for a source of violence. It drains the movie of any sense of mystery- it’s not a case to be solved, it’s just the way the world is.
Pretty bleak shit, right? How exactly could a man do this?
The real mystery of Ernest is not really how he does it. Eventually, after the Osage beg for intervention, the recently formed FBI sends a team (led by a wry, matter-of-fact Jesse Plemons) to investigate the murders.
By this point, we know the extent of Ernest’s involvement, maybe more than he knows it himself. Still, he starts to squirm as the pressure mounts, even as his uncle reassures him.
It’s here that DiCaprio’s performance helps bring out a much murkier mystery: How much of what Ernest has done is he willing and able to admit to himself?
He seems to sincerely believe that he can both love his wife and take everything from her, and it’s to both DiCaprio and Gladstone’s credit that they balance the shifting nature of their relationship while never losing sight of the initial spark that drew them to each other.
Now, there are a couple of reasons I set this post up with a discussion of Goodfellas.
The primary reason is that the movie openly invites the comparison! In both films, there is a nearly identical courtroom sequence involving a Scorsese leading man pointing at Robert De Niro and implicating him in a criminal scheme.
De Niro himself is another reason to compare the two. This is the tenth feature that he and Scorsese have done together, beginning with Mean Streets. There is probably an entire book to be written about the evolution of their collaboration, and the ways that De Niro’s charisma is channeled to increasingly disturbing and haunting ends as he’s gotten older.
In this film, he gives one of the most quietly deranged performances I’ve seen in years. His William Hale is a manipulative monster dressed up as a charismatic, charming old man. But De Niro’s eyes always carry that dark ambition (when they aren’t obscured by a set of comically deployed driving goggles).
There’s an early close-up of him at Ernest and Mollie’s wedding that made me gasp: Scorsese and DP Rodrigo Prieto stay pinned on his face as he moves through the crowd to speak with someone. It has the effect of watching a rattlesnake slithering toward its prey head-on.
This is the kind of tracking shot the movie requires; one that conveys a character’s interiority, held long enough to make the audience squirm.
There’s another memorable shot like this focused on Gladstone; she walks through a crowded train platform, her calm demeanor fractured by paranoia and the mysterious “wasting disease” that has plagued so many other women she knows. Scenes of the mostly white crowd gawking at her put us in her headspace; she can spot all the wolves in this picture.
Late in the film, as Ernest grows slightly more conflicted about his role in the plot against Mollie, his Uncle William utters what, to me, is the key line of the film.
“Expectin' a miracle to make all this go away?” he asks, as his nephew quietly shakes his head. “You know they don’t happen anymore.”
In the context of Scorsese’s career-long search for spiritual transcendence, this line hits like a sledgehammer. But it also clashes against the deeply-held spirituality of members of the Osage tribe. There’s a moment where a woman, nearing death and deeply aware of it, is greeted by the spirits of three other Native Americans, who warmly welcome her to the next life.
Because of moments like this, I, the person who spent a large amount of time comparing this movie to Goodfellas, think it’s a mistake to call it just another crime picture.
It is a continuation of the late-period Scorsese fixation on guilt and the inability of men to be redeemed that was central to 2019’s The Irishman. That he has been able to create these deeply personal, deeply conflicted portraits while getting Netflix and Apple to fork over $150-200 million each is probably the real miracle.
Stray thoughts:
I’ve only seen this movie once, and I think there are many other essays to be written about it. I may dive in with further thoughts after a second viewing.
While I consider De Niro to be the standout performance in the film, DiCaprio and Gladstone are absolutely phenomenal as well, and the movie is populated with many memorable faces.
This is often a very funny movie, especially when the various criminals involved in the plot start double-crossing each other.
While Killers of the Flower Moon does feature dueling voiceovers as in Goodfellas, they are not meant to illustrate character psychology. This is another crucial choice in the film: It is unafraid to let the audience read into the often conflicting impulses of its main character.
My friend Ben, who has been doing a Scorsese retrospective on his own Substack, also reviewed this.
Ahhh, what a rad review! I would also love to read that nonexistent book on De Niro and Scorsese. Some top-notch writing here.