Scorsese/De Niro: Killers of the Flower Moon(Dir. Martin Scorsese, 3h36m, 2023)

2023 was a busy year for Robert De Niro; first, it marked his 80th birthday, secondly, fifty years of Scorsese and De Niro's collaborations, as Mean Streets celebrated half a century, and thirdly, the release of their most recent collaboration, the sweeping, unflinching, and often stark depiction of the Osage Nation murders in the 1920s. This is Killers of the Flower Moon, a film that not only unites Scorsese's two great muses, De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio as the insatiable coyotes after oil, money, and blood at the door of the Native American community, exemplified by Lily Gladstone's Mollie Burkhart, but considers, on the largest possible canvas, those themes of power, money and greed that have informed his work for the last half-century.

Between Casino in 1995 and The Irishman in 2019, Scorsese and De Niro both remained busy, receiving both critical acclaim, Scorsese finally winning Best Director for The Departed on his 6th nomination, chalking up five between his most recent two collaborations with De Niro, whilst De Niro would receive an acting nomination for Silver Linings Playbook. Commercially, five of Scorsese's biggest hits also came in the last twenty five years, whilst De Niro's most recent hits, excluding the self-aware Scorsese-riffing Joker have come from against-type roles that depict the actor's more emotive side, or as stern authoritarian parents in comedies such as the Meet The Parents' trilogy's Jack Byrnes. Scorsese and De Niro's reunion in The Irishman, alongside Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, may have brought the duo back together. It also felt like an end of an era, a farewell to gangsters, and to the great actors of the genre, its protagonists either murdered, dying in prison, or slowly dwindling away to nothing in retirement homes.

The wolves at the door: William Hale (De Niro) and Ernest Burkhard (DiCaprio)

It seemed, at least in 2019, like De Niro and Scorsese would never make a film together again. Into this, four years hence, comes Killers of the Flower Moon. This epic begins, and indeed ends with the Osage people-it is their discovery of oil that brings them fortune, but it is also their sudden new-found wealth that brings unwelcome attention, from the coyotes and wolves, the white men, that plague their community. One of these is Leonardo DiCaprio's Ernest Burkhart, introduced in another roving one-take shot that takes him through the crowds awaiting their employers in the oil fields, past a quickly brewing fight and soon to his uncle, William Hale (De Niro).

That it's taken both actors another thirty years since 1993's This Boy's Life, especially since De Niro recommended Scorsese the younger actor a full decade before Gangs of New York (2002) is as remarkable as having both of Scorsese's great muses interacting. That DiCaprio is so against type, an uncomplicated man of the earth largely manipulated by his powerful and power-hungry relative is one thing; as he pulls his hangdog look of confusion, of being unaware of the sweep of the man he calls "King"'s ambitions, is one thing; that the film does not absolve him of his part in the murders that he, his co-conspirators and his uncle will soon inflict.

For it is the Osage people that form the core of Scorsese's film; their plight, the murder of their people, and the blind eye that local law enforcement has to the dozens of mysterious deaths in the area, are brought vividly to life in a series of stark shots, of implications of what is being taken from the Osage people, each tableaux grimly brought to an end with Gladstone's voice-over informing us, even in sequences where outright murder is committed, where the evidence of our eyes is murder most foul, that there is "no investigation". The wolves and coyotes are not merely Hale, but the entire political and civil power structure that allows him and his men, including his nephew, and the hired guns and thugs, to murder and threaten with impunity.

Burkhard and the film's true star, Mollie (Lily Gladstone)

Against Hale,whose kindly persona and open friendship towards the Osage masks a figure that is every bit as dangerous and Machiavellian as any of De Niro's previous antagonists, and his hatchet men, including musician Sturgill Simpson as real-life cowboy and moonshiner, and the scene-stealing Ty Mitchell as small time crook, John Ramsay, not to mention Burkhart, is Mollie. We do not see the Osage murders in abstraction but through her eyes-the deaths of her family members, as Hale's plot seeks to steal their headrights, is grim and often upsetting, especially in the case of her sister, Anna (Cara Jade Myers), whose autopsy is carried out matter-of-fact in public. Throughout, whilst Scorsese is keenly aware of his Osage protagonists and their plight, the antagonistic wolves and coyotes that predate upon them, the white Americans regard the Native Americans, and their bodies, as innately disposable, with Hale essentially having one of Mollie's brothers murdered to claim on his life insurance.

After all, as the film forcibly reminds us, the Osage are regarded as "incompetent", Mollie having to approach the bank that holds her money-the wealth that is rightfully her family's-multiple times; once again, the imbalance of power, even as Mollie falls in love with the dull Burkhart, is clear, especially once it becomes apparent that her insulin is being poisoned. It is also through Mollie's eyes, and though her experiences, and Gladstone's performance, that the resistance, the strength of the Osage, and Mollie's own resilience become apparent; it is here that her belief in Burkhart, as he and Hale begin to poison her insulin, turns to open suspicion, a suspicion, that, with the arrival of the nascent Bureau of Investigation, headed by Tom White (Jesse Plemons), begins to unmask Hale and Burkhart

This is not, as in other adaptions, the BoI, later the FBI's tale to tell. Neither, truly, is it Scorsese's, but he uses the chance to tell it for the Osage well; the fact that Martin Scorsese has had to, once again turn to streaming to fund and release this work is, frankly, a conversation for another time. He does not excuse Burkhart for his feckless support of his father until the eleventh hour and a family tragedy changes his mind, he does not excuse the wolves and coyotes of Osage County, Oklahoma for their racism and rapacious designs on the Osages' oil. Whilst narratives of the period have been written by members of the community, particularly the novels of Fred Grove, for now, the unflinching depictions of events by an eighty-year old Italio-American will do-it has cast a light into an era that many Americans, and many international audiences were unaware of.

Whilst Killers of the Flower Moon may be Scorsese's final film with De Niro, it's a worthy ending for fifty years of collaboration

Where Scorsese leaves us, though, is here: with a click of a radio play typewriter, Scorsese comes into shot, and in thirty seconds, tears down the barrier between Mollie, as played by Gladstone, and the real life woman. It's at once the most powerful, and the most devastating shot of Scorsese's entire filmography; by appearing in his own film, Scorsese strips away decades of his own filmography; this isn't Henry Hill explaining how he has to go back to living like a schmuck, this isn't Jordan Belfort conning his audience, and thus, us, this isn't Joe Pesci's advice to the audience, this is Martin Scorsese directly confronting us with the fact that Mollie Burkhart was not merely a character in one of his films, but a real woman. And then Scorsese is gone. In his place are the modern Osage. 

But Killers of the Flower Moon is more than this. Scorsese knows time is short; he will turn 82 later this year, De Niro will turn 81. Scorsese has already lost one of his great creative muses; Robbie Robertson, whose soundtrack is the pulse of the film, died shortly before the film's release-Scorsese may have already begun production on his next film, but as he himself noted to Deadline in 2023: "I want to tell stories, and there's no more time." Whether Scorsese will ever work with De Niro again remains to be seen; their legacy together is some of the greatest American films ever made; Killers of the Flower Moon rightfully belongs among that number, a searing invocation of one of America's darkest moments that concentrates on its victims, rather than its criminals.

Rating: Must See

 Killers of the Flower Moon is available via streaming on Apple TV.

Next week, and the rest of August, we're on break, but will return with a new season of reviews in September.

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