If I had a nickel for each time I watched a 3.5-hour-long epic about racial violence this semester, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, adapted from the 2017 nonfiction book of the same name by author David Grann, tells the story of the Osage people living in Oklahoma and the period known as the “Reign of Terror” in the early 1920s, in which the Osage began rapidly dying under mysterious circumstances following a sudden influx of wealth from the discovery of oil on their land.
The central Osage family that we follow through the film is that of Mollie Burkhart (neé Kyle), portrayed by Lily Gladstone. Following Mollie’s marriage to newly returned World War 1 veteran Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), her mother died of a strange illness, her three sisters were murdered under increasingly suspicious conditions, and Mollie herself became dangerously ill. Happening parallel to these events, not coincidentally, was Mollie’s growing interdependence on Ernest and his uncle William Hale (Robert DeNiro), who, under the guise of benevolence, was vying for the Kyle family’s immense fortune and claim to the oil-rich land.
Where Scorsese’s adaptation departs the most from the book is the lens through which he chose to convey the story. Where Grann takes a more true-crime style approach, giving facts and details, building a mystery from the vantage point of the Osage themselves, Scorsese chooses to follow the plot through the vantage point of the oppressors, chiefly Ernest. This is visible even from the posters, which bring DiCaprio to the foreground. In doing so, little mystery as to the source of the murders is maintained for a large duration of the film, with the blame (unsurprisingly) landing on the shoulders of Ernest and Hale.
However, while we see the story largely from Ernest’s point of view, he is never painted as the protagonist. Rather, the audience is encouraged to distrust and dislike him from our first introduction, not insignificantly due to his presence as a white man on indigenous land, playing a role in an indigenous story. Instead, the moments where the vantage point shifts are some of the most compelling in the film, especially those in which we see Mollie’s experience.
Mollie is undoubtedly the champion of the film, and for reasons far beyond her being the sole survivor of her generation in the family. It is through her efforts and advocacy that necessary outside attention is brought to the plight of the Osage, through her that we witness the brutal impacts of Ernest’s malice not only on her family but on herself as well, and on her that we pin our hope for the future of a people so continually wronged.
Perhaps reinforced by the perspective being that of the oppressor, one of the greatest shocks in the film was not when Osage deaths were revealed to be at the hands of white oppressors, but rather when Mollie’s appeal to the government for help and support for the Osage people is heard and answered. So much of our history is told in this way, through the lens of the oppressors and the group in power, that we anticipate the erasure of the voices of those impacted.
Scorsese is acutely aware of this, and even more aware of who his audience is. I may have reached the message of implication even earlier than most moviegoers around me. You know what’s not fun? Watching a movie about years of genocide and hearing them mention the place where you went to prom.
Even for those of us who didn’t grow up in proximity to the Oklahoma border, he makes it abundantly clear at the end of the movie that the perpetual erasure of indigenous voices is something that a white American majority willingly contributes to. In showing the narration of Mollie Burkhart’s story as a radio spectacle to a, you guessed it, entirely white upper-class audience, viewers are urged to reflect on to what extent they engage with stories like this as spectacle, and the complicity they have in similarly sitting and experiencing a retelling of this tragedy. While both Scorsese and Grann worked closely with the Osage people to tell their stories truthfully and honor their experiences and culture, it calls on audiences to reflect upon the ways in which we receive stories and who controls how they are told.
When watching Malcolm X, I couldn’t help but reflect on the apparent similarities between the two movies. Both were adapted from narrative nonfiction, both have a daunting run-time, and both are centered around experiences of racial prejudice and violence. Where Malcolm X differs, however, is in the framework through which the events of the film unfold. We follow Malcolm through this life, experiencing everything through and alongside him.
It may appear at first glance that this is the “correct” way to adapt a historical drama to film, after all, the voices that are too often silenced are the ones that should be amplified and given a platform in order to gain a thorough knowledge and reveal the truths of history. However, Killers of the Flower Moon takes a stance of making a movie, not for those impacted most directly, but rather for those who need to hear it the most. If that’s the case, it succeeded, with the Reign of Terror and the Osage people being brought into the foreground of conversations in a way it has never been before. It seems that there is no one right way to bring these stories into a collective consciousness, but their existing there at all is imperative.
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