Martin Scorsese’s historical epic Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023) has been released and entered public discourse as the United States, as a nation, grapples with its history and attempts to revise it to be more inclusive. The story of the systematic murders and land grabs that befell the Osage people in the 1920s at the hands of white opportunists wielding an unjust political system has brought a chapter of American history back into the light and stirred countless debates and conversations about the legacy of “manifest destiny”.
In this way Killers Of The Flower Moon could be considered a resounding success. Viewers are left to contemplate their complicity in a political apparatus designed to oppress and exploit people like the Osage while others see themselves on the receiving end of the brutality. Killers Of The Flower Moon is a film that is violent in every conceivable way that demands the attention and consideration of its audience. But it is more than just a reenactment of an atrocity, it is a portrait of how power corrupts and the wide ranging influence of that corruption; a sort of terrifying meditation on the social process that got the 45th President Of The United States elected.
Scorsese realizes that Killers Of The Flower Moon must represent the Osage people as more than just victims. But Scorsese also realizes that, as a white filmmaker, he could never give the Osage an authentic voice in his film. What Scorsese can do is to include and incorporate the Osage into the film as much as possible while critiquing the white villains of the piece. Killers Of The Flower Moon is an Osage story told unsympathetically and honestly from a white perspective that holds all of those who are guilty accountable.
At the end of the film Scorsese even reminds his viewers, via a Lucky Strike radio broadcast session, that even a revisionist and inclusive retelling of these tragic events is still a spectacle designed as entertainment as all films are no matter the author. Scorsese’s cameo suggests that he knows he is not the best person to tell this story but, as of now, he is the only filmmaker capable of making Killers Of The Flower Moon, a film that had to be made. And he has made a masterfully beautiful, violent, and angry film full of contempt, fury and a strong anti-capitalist sentiment.
