CANNES REVIEW: Martin Scorsese Premieres Epic New Film, Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese stuns with Killers of the Flower Moon world premiere at Cannes Film Festival.
Martin Scorsese brings an epic adaptation of David Grann’s novel based on 1920s Oklahoma with Killers of the Flower Moon, a police and FBI drama on unsolved murders dubbed “Reign of Terror,” amongst the Osage Nation and the greed, theft, and systemic racism that corroded their oil-rich nation.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Earnest, a young man who doesn’t quite have his life together but has a passion for sleeping all day and partying all night. The Osage Nation is rich in oil after receiving some of the worst land for their people, which turns into a gold mine as they strike oil and are the new upper class.
With their newfound riches, they are preyed upon by whites, specifically white men marrying Osage women for their wealth. Slowly family members start to disappear one by one as DiCaprio and his family, friends, and the general public begin to cipher the Osage’s wealth through systematic disenfranchisement, theft, and murder.
DiCaprio is simply riveting, and we see his full range in this role from desperation, regret, and angst to deception as the husband of an Osage woman named Mollie and fueled by his Masonic uncle known as “King” embodied by Robert De Niro. DiCaprio has perfect chemistry with De Niro (The Irishman), who brings his classic intimidation and humor to this very tense drama.
Lily Gladstone (Certain Women), phenomenal in her role as Mollie, reveals the pain, suffering, and false sense of love and hope that the women of the Osage lived under. Gladstone suffers as her husband quietly takes out almost every member of her family and slowly begins to poison her through orders from his uncle.
The film is not an easy watch, it will make you uncomfortable and Scorsese doesn’t provide any padding to this story; he’s giving a detailed, raw, and chronicled look with inspired truth serum.
Some viewers laughed at some of the sexism and racism in the film during the premiere, but the joke was on them as Scorsese came with punches on what this country did to Native people, especially women, and showed every corrosive and manipulative tactic which was ungodly. This film is rich and layered. The nod to the Tulsa race massacre was an honest truth-telling, and its references and inclusion cast a wide net on what has been done to native and Black people in America. The score and cinematography are epic. I can’t wait to see this again.
This post has been updated and serves as a first out-of-the-theater reaction at Cannes Film Festival.
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