As far as I can remember growing up when we learned American history in school, there was a very short segment on Native Americans and it usually came with a learning unit on westward expansion or something similar.
Sure, we learned about the “Trail of Tears” somewhere around then and I vividly remember thinking how messed up that was at a young age.
However, the horrors that were visited upon the Osage Nation were overlooked – along with several other historical events I’ve only learned about as an adult.
Going in to see the “Killers of the Flower Moon,” I had no idea what exactly I was prepared for and even after seeing it, I’m both angered and shocked at what transpired there.
Still, that shouldn’t stop you from watching it – I feel like this film is probably the best I’ve seen this year and I urge you to see it as well.
Killers of the Flower Moon is a 2023 American epic revisionist Western crime drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth, based on the 2017 book of the same name by David Grann.
Its plot centers on a series of Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation during the 1920s, committed after oil was discovered on tribal land.
Leonardo Di Caprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone lead an ensemble cast that includes Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Scott Shepherd, Cara Myers, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Janae Collins, Jason Isbell, Gary Basaraba, and Brendan Fraser.
Coming in at 206 minutes long, the flick is rated R for violence, some grisly images, and language.
Osage elders somberly bury a ceremonial pipe, mourning the assimilation of their descendants into white American society.
Wandering through the badlands of their Oklahoma reservation, several Osage find oil gushing from the ground.
The tribe becomes fabulously wealthy after the exploitation of oil on their lands, but the reservation laws require white “guardians” to manage their money.
In 1918, Ernest Burkhart (Di Caprio) returns from World War I to his rancher uncle William “King” Hale (De Niro), who also houses Ernest’s brother Byron (Shepherd) on the reservation.
Hale poses as a friendly benefactor of the Osage people, speaking their language and bestowing gifts upon them, but he secretly schemes to murder them and steal their wealth.
To facilitate his plan, he tells Ernest, who works as a cab driver, to pay special attention to Mollie Kyle (Gladstone), an Osage whose family owns much of the oil headrights.
Headrights are defined as: rights belonging to member of an American Indian tribe to receive a per-capita share in the distribution of income earned by the tribal trust fund (as from the sale or lease of mineral rights) or a share of the fund on its termination.
A romance eventually develops between the two, and they are married in a ceremony that mixes Catholic and Osage religious iconography.
Hale tells Ernest that he will inherit a greater share of the headrights as more of Mollie’s family dies.
He has already ordered the deaths of several wealthy Osage, and continues by ordering the husband of Mollie’s sister Minnie (Dion) to slowly kill her with poison to mimic the effects of wasting illness and has her other sister Anna (Myers) killed by gunshot.
The depiction of greed and murder on the big screen is deeply unsettling and De Niro and Di Caprio’s acting skills are on point – so do yourself a favor and catch this while it’s in theaters for the fully sobering effect.
