KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. In a recent profile for the Los Angeles Times, Marissa R. Moss refers to “the radical empathy” of Jason Isbell, the frequently mis-described artist whose albums have spent more time on the turntable in this house than any other’s in the last decade. Not coincidentally, Isbell has a small but critical supporting part in Killers of the Flower Moon. This confluence made me realize empathy, more than any other attribute, is really what has come to define the work of Martin Scorsese, who, when he shrugs off this mortal coil, will have left behind inarguably the most significant contribution to American cinema in its history.
Isbell and Scorsese share an innate, probably subconscious ability to share the pain and glory of “heroes” and “villains,” a trait that inevitably places the focus on their shared humanity. In Scorsese’s case, it has made the work divisive — a letter-writer once excoriated my own review of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) for celebrating toxic masculinity — because the audience at large does not (or cannot) take the time and care to differentiate between exploration and endorsement. Qualification becomes quantification and understanding the world becomes an exercise in binary bigotry: hate or love and never the twain shall meet. Maybe more to the point, the wrongheaded notion that opposing viewpoints cannot be broached (that there actually are heroes and villains) only serves to calcify already problematic resistance to discourse and greater understanding.
As a result, Scorsese movies have been celebrated against their intentions: His exploration of violence as an expression of the animalistic aspects of humanity becomes titillating; characters who exist outside or between the lines governing “polite” society become torch bearers, etc. These reactions are not incorrect or unfair, of course; they are just myopic. Because what he has spent more than half a century trying to parse is the totality of lived experience, of which crime and violence and betrayal and lost faith are all a part. Despite its occasional coarseness, his body of work is perhaps the most deeply felt, most vulnerably inquisitive in its medium.
One of the most challenging aspects of Scorsese’s exploration lies in its insistence on the audience to examine the nature of evil, or of evil acts as born of simple human deviancy. And that challenge has never been presented with greater delicacy and nuance than in Killers of the Flower Moon. The acts depicted therein are certainly heinous, easily classifiable. But the motivations behind them, while superficially simple, may in fact be ephemeral and unknowable.
Which is not to suggest the crimes against the Osage people, as partially described in Killers of the Flower Moon, are defensible; they are not. But the motivations of the people who committed those crimes cannot be dismissed as those of some storybook notion of Evil as a force existing outside humanity. And therein lies the true complexity of this astounding, gorgeous movie and of the bulk of Scorsese’s work. Evil is people, or is perpetrated by them, but it is an aggregate, a result rather than a simple motivation.
As Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns home from the First World War, he finds small-town Oklahoma reshaped by the discovery of oil beneath the ground of the Osage Reservation. As silent-movie title cards inform us, the Osage have become the richest people, per capita, on Earth. And they are being murdered at an astounding rate. Ernest, with close counsel from his cattle-rancher uncle William “King” Hale (Robert De Niro) — whose landholding is notably devoid of oil — sets himself up as a cab driver and begins courting the alluring but circumspect Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman with notable family wealth. Ernest is a little dim, susceptible to influence and, ultimately, not self-aware enough to keep himself from doing terrible things. As Mollie’s family members and dozens of other members of their community die under questionable circumstances, the Osage attempt to mount a defense at the federal level, which eventually leads to an inquest by the newly formed Bureau of Investigation.
Based on the book by David Grann and adapted by Scorsese and Eric Roth, Killers of the Flower Moon presents a detective story in an unprecedented way, proceeding from known crimes and suspected criminals and introducing the detectives in the final act. The movie puts us at uncomfortable proximity to the people being decimated, as we look over the shoulders of Ernest and even-more duplicitous white opportunists like his older brother Byron (Scott Shephard), the simpering Bill Smith (Isbell) and King himself. From so close-up, the events of the movie feel almost kaleidoscopic and unavoidable; we, like Ernest, may not want to understand the sickening truth.
It is no small thing to say this may well be Martin Scorsese’s most accomplished, most devastating work. Absent so many of the slick moves we have used to define him, it is a troubling, magisterial masterwork that demands close reading and further study. R. 207M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
NOW PLAYING
AFTER DEATH. Christian documentary about near-death experiences. PG13. 103M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.
BEETLEJUICE (1988). Hands to yourselves, folks. R. 92M. MINOR.
THE CREATOR. A soldier (John David Washington) in the war between humans and AI robots captures a secret weapon in the form of a child robot. PG13. 133M. BROADWAY.
THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER. Ellen Burstyn reprises her maternal role from the original horror masterpiece, this time to aid possessed twins. R. 121M. BROADWAY.
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THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993). Jack Skellington does some disastrous cultural appropriation. PG. 76M. BROADWAY 3D, MILL CREEK 3D.
PAW PATROL: THE MIGHTY MOVIE. An asteroid grants dogs superpowers in this animated adventure voiced by Dan Duran and Kristen Bell. PG. 92M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.
SAW X. The puppet-loving serial killer (Tobin Bell) makes the case for socialized medicine via gross basement torture when he takes revenge on medical fraudsters. R. 118. BROADWAY.
TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR. Swifties, your time is now. NR. 165M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.
Fortuna Theatre is temporarily closed. For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in Sharing their Stories.