The murders committed against the people of the Osage tribe in the 1920s are a suppressed chapter in US history. Martin Scorsese uses it in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” .
At the beginning there is the end of a culture. On their land in Oklahoma, the Osage plan to bury a ritual object as they mourn the dawn of new times in which members of their community learn a new language and slowly dissolve into white culture. But this decline happens differently than expected. The earth is shaking outside. The light flickers, a fountain of oil rises from the ground. The Osage are made people, which means their fate is finally sealed.
Suddenly they are the people with the highest per capita income in the world. It is the 1920s and it is the black and white, silent images of the cinema with which director Martin Scorsese traces how the Osage Nation becomes rich and the whites put themselves at their service. For now. Seemingly.
After returning home from World War I, Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, comes to the Osage country, where his uncle William “King” Hale (Robert De Niro) owns a ranch. He learns the language and customs of the population and falls in love with Mollie (Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman, whom he marries. Mollie understands that Ernest isn’t particularly intelligent. He blindly follows his manipulative uncle, who presents himself as a friend of the Osage, but who in reality wants to funnel the Osage’s “oil money” into his family through clever marriage policies and a series of murders.
Against this background, Ernest plays an ambivalent role. He loves his wife, but he also exploits her people; he attacks them, steals from them, and organizes murders against them. At some point he himself resorts to poisoning Mollie, who suffers from diabetes, with insulin injections. His face always remains honest. As if both sides, money and love, could exist equally, as if they did
do not represent a contradiction. As if it’s not at all understandable why this should be a problem.
First of all, “Killers” is a quiet, meditative film, similar to the other films in Scorsese’s late work – “The Irishman” for example. “Killers” is also a gangster story in its own way; here, too, people go to church. The gangsters have retreated to the empty prairies of the West. This means that the Americana of gangsterism and Catholicism are suddenly less present than transparent. They shine through the film like the light in the church where Mollie prays, like Robert De Niro’s eyes through his glasses, or like the fire of burning fields through the window blinds behind which Ernest poisons Mollie.
Mollie is one of Scorsese’s first confident female characters. Until now they were figures removed from reality, ethereal figures, projection surfaces, (unattainable) objects of desire for men. Lily Gladstone, on the other hand, is the silent center of the film. At first she and Ernest sit next to each other in the living room. The storm is howling outside, she tells him to listen to the wind. Be quiet, don’t talk too much, don’t film too much, hold back: these are the ethics of this film, which are characterized by the slow rhythm of the friendly Mollie – and her physical decay.
This rhythm doesn’t just have advantages. Despite all the defense of the art form of cinema and its history, the watchable, three and a half hour film with its bloated 200 million budget often feels like a compressed series, which it might have worked even better as.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” (directed by Martin Scorsese). Runs nationwide. From 12.
2023-10-20 20:02:55
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