Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon is about The Osage Reign of Terror that stretched its bloody length between 1918 until 1931. During that time dozens of unsolved murders and suspicious deaths of wealthy full-blood Osage natives plagued Osage county in Oklahoma, where unscrupulous white men felt it was their manifest destiny to steal the Osage’s headrights to land that was producing copious amounts of oil. It is a catastrophic, sickening journey into the depths of depravity humanity will plumb, to stuff the black hole of their greed full to the brim.
Based upon David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, Scorsese at 80 proves himself to be the preeminent American auteur when picking the scabs off the dark and sordid past of America, the true horror of capitalism behind the stinking faeces of the American Dream. From the opening sequence of a peace pipe being buried, the grief of a culture near extinction is palpable, the last generation of Osage people to be taught the old ways before the next one is tutored by the white man and forever assimilated.
The Osage was one of the few Native American tribes to buy their own reservation. Consequently, they retained more sovereignty and mineral rights over their land, so when oil was found in 1894 they became some of the richest people in America. Scorsese shows this newfound prosperity with a silent montage of Osage people spending their wealth on private education, air travel, and automobiles. The conspicuous consumption is accompanied by massive fuck-you grins, a small victory in the face of genocidal colonialism, and a slight that the white men will not forget and never forgive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuFUuOhXeLw
Men like William “King” Hale, a cattle rancher and champion of the Osage, a man who speaks their language fluently, is like a grandfather to their children, and calls them, “the finest, wealthiest, and most beautiful people on God’s earth.” Secretly he is responsible for the localised genocide against them so the flow of money surges back to the white elite. He employs his dim-witted, Popeye-jawed, World War 1 veteran nephew, Ernest Burkhart to befriend, seduce, and later marry Mollie, an Osage whose family owns much of the headrights. Leonardo DiCaprio plays brilliantly against type as the dullard Ernest and Lily Gladstone as Mollie is the humorous and stoic conscience at the heart of the story.
There are moments, especially during the marriage of Ernest and Mollie, where we are tricked into witnessing a true Utopian vision of multi-culturalism. Osage and Catholic rituals are bound together into something unique during their union, but America’s melting-pot was always about assimilation rather than celebrating difference, the Osage smitten by wealth have been glamoured by their subservient colonisers, vampires who tend to their needs as chauffeurs and servants. The Osage power is temporary, drained meticulously over the years by interbreeding, lawyers, and cold-blooded murder.
The fact that this man existed is terrifying beyond belief.
At one point Ernest is driven by one of the Osage and asks the question, ‘Whose land is this?” Ernest receives the answer, “My land” but as the overhead shot reveals the extent of the derricks sucking the land dry of oil we fear for the lives of every member of the Osage Nation. There is no way men like Hale, so entrenched in racism could ever stomach people like Mollie benefitting from fortunate circumstance. His smiling, duplicitous nature is gut wrenching to behold and Robert De Niro channels all his hatred for Donald Trump into the role. The fact that Hale can twist men like Ernest to reconcile his marriage and love for Mollie, whilst simultaneously poisoning her and exterminating her kin makes him one of the most chilling and reprehensible of evil men committed to screen. The fact that this man existed is terrifying beyond belief.
Killers of the Flower Moon is a gruelling masterpiece of a film, a grim rendition of a history erased from America’s consciousness, a bleak look into the abyss. However, should America reconciling with its violent past come at the expense of the feelings of its Native people? Are films like Killers of the Flower Moon metaphorical hair shirts, sources of self-flagellation for liberal white audiences? Are we in danger of codifying the very misery and victimhood of Native people through revealing the stories that are meant to make white America take stock and examine its collective racial memory?
The Native actor Devery Jacobs from the comedy Reservation Dogs wrote, “Being Native, watching this movie was fucking hellfire. Imagine the worst atrocities committed against (your) ancestors, then having to sit (through) a movie explicitly filled with them, with the only respite being 30-minute-long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings.”
When we think of murderous white men like Ernest Burkhart and his uncle William “King” Hale, and their crushing nihilism, their only impulse to destroy, we are reminded of a line from the Leonard Cohen song The Future, “Take the only tree that’s left and stuff it up the hole In your culture.