The Mighty Whitey Father Giveth and He Taketh Away
by John Kendall Hawkins
Martin Scorcese's new film for Apple TV and Paramount, The Killers of the Flower Moon, is a long movie, running at some 3 hours and 26 minutes. Ind'gen movies tend to be long, as if the producers wanted to make up for the years of neglect for our native Americans, in one small burst of screen time designed to pull our heartstrings, along with our purse strings. Victim porn, with award-winning soundtrack (Canadian Ind'gen, and former leader of The Band, Robbie Robertson, will almost certainly pull down in absentia -- he's now dead -- the Oscar for the movie's music: Maybe Bob Dylan will accept the award on his behalf, if Bob is still alive and not 'discovered beneath a truck' by then.) Long is okay, and usually Scorcese's long is better than most directors who go on and on, for no apparent reason. I mean, are you telling me Dances With Wolves couldn't have been a two-hour movie instead of three?
The thing you have to get used to with Scorsese long is he's telling a social story and doesn't delve directly into the politics. This can be frustrating for Lefties who want him to, say, come right out and finger the mafia for the JFK hit in his last film, The Irishman. On the other hand, Oliver Stone pointed so many fingers at the Deep State in JFK (188 minutes!) that one longed for Abbie Hoffman's f*ck-em-all middle finger back again for a little levity (remember that Pentagon lift he did?). But it is a little mystifying why Scorsese has Killers run at more than three hours for a morbid retelling of And Then There Were None.
It's a long take on David Grann's short book with a long title, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. That birth and the rise of J. Edgar Hoover takes up most of the book (albeit, related to the doings in Osage Country), but gets only modest coverage in the film. The producers of Killers seem content to go with the mystery of the title they have: All of us wondering what the heck a 'flower moon' is and wanting to know who would kill such a beautiful thing? Bring in the American Crime angle and you got ho-hum, here we go again, and nobody wants to hear how J. Edgar's FBI came to the rescue of those poor Ind'gens. The FBI is not Clint Eastwood, good only because he takes out the bad and the ugly. Casting Jesse Plemmons as a low-key, ex-Texas Ranger FBI agent in Killers is wise, as he was last notably seen as the corrupt Todd in Breaking Bad, and that's how many folks see the FBI.
The American Crime of this story is what happened after Napoleon sold his Louisiana Territory to the US in 1803 (the Louisiana Purchase), resulting not long after in a tremendous rush westward by settlers and adventurers and miners in a land grab bonanza that had tremendous consequences for Native Americans. As NatGeo tells us,
A significant push toward the west coast of North America began in the 1810s. It was intensified by the belief in manifest destiny, federally issued Indian removal acts, and economic promise"In less than 50 years, the western border of the United States grew from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, starting with the Louisiana Purchase and ending with the territories gained from Mexico in the Mexican-American War.
The Osage Nation (the name is an English rendering of the French phonetic version of Wa-zha-zhe), comfortably ensconced in Missouri, was one such nation pushed out by the expansion. Grann writes in his book that "the Osage were forced to cede nearly a hundred million acres of their ancestral land, ultimately finding refuge in a 50-by-125-mile area in southeastern Kansas." Ouch.
Long story short, they end up being promised a paradise on Earth by the god in the White House, Thomas Jefferson, but him speak with forked tongue, and the Wa-zha-zhe take it up the wazoozoo and are pushed bitterly into a hard-scrabble part of Indian Territory that is far closer to Hell than Heaven in its terrain and attitude. But then, lo and behold, God's alter-ego shows up and oil is discovered on this toss-away property that the Wa-zha-zhe are condemned to find a way to survive on. Suddenly, the IMDB story summary tells us, "When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one - until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery." American Crime.
The film stars Robert De Niro (William Hale), Leonardo DiCaprio (Ernest Burkhart), and newcomer and Ind'gen actress, Lily Gladstone (Mollie Burkhart). Scorsese last directed Bobby in The Irishman (2019) and Leo in Gangs of New York (2002). It's a reunion of sorts for Bobby and Leo, who previously worked off each other nicely in This Boy's Life (1993), although it's the first time both worked together for Marty. This is effective ensemble work here. These three principle characters create a complex triadic dialectical bond that features criminal loyalty (Hale - Ernest), marital devotion (Ernest - Mollie), redemptive faith in Christian ethics (Mollie - later Ernest), and the parasitical domination of one tribe over another (mighty whitey - Ind'gen).
Of these bonds, I found the Christian angle understated and yet it turns out to be the catalyst for what unfolds in the film's telling of what happened to the Osage in Oklahoma in the 1920s. The theme is introduced early in the film in the first real talk that Mollie and Ernest have in her house at the dinner table. Mollie understands that Ernest is loyal to William Hale (they are distant relatives) and is seemingly leery of Ernest's motivation in courting her. She is suspicious of Hale. But she likes Ernest. He is fumbly with words and a human heart seems to beat behind his rough-and-ready demeanor. She wonders about his spiritual life:
Mollie: Are you scared of him?
Ernest: My brother... Who?
Mollie: ...Your Uncle.
No, he isn't; he's "the nicest man in the world," Ernest vouches.
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