The squaw man

You ask me chronologically the greatest American director goes: John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, then Martin Scorsese. With each of them you can take any decade of their 50 years or more careers and find major works (that hold up) spanning each decade. Who’ll be the next one to follow?

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023, Martin Scorsese) is perfect. It’s not so much long as it’s the length it has to be for the significance of its historical impact to be felt. Its thematic undercurrent might be the love of money corrupts. And what an American theme it is. 

     It doesn’t take long to establish its core conflict: white man is gonna take everything from the Osage. Yet it could also be said that it’s not only the white man who is corrupted by the love of money. I can’t seem to be able to overlook the main Osage characters, the sisters MOLLIE, ANNA, and RETA, all marry white men; something that they know wouldn’t be possible if they didn’t have money. It’s hard for us to accept the logic behind the actions of most of the main characters, as I’m sure it was hard for them to make any sense of why they themselves all did what they did. And isn’t that what it means to be human?

     There’s something inevitable about the fates of the characters. Like there’s some sense of there’s nothing they could have done any different even if they wanted to. The pace of the story in Killers of the Flower Moon is measured: a steady dose of unendurable traumatic misery. In many ways it’s a film with a very narrow dramatic focus.

     But Jack Fisk’s production design is what’s big. The booming town is most impressive when viewed from within. The new money extravagance is depicted down to the most smallest detail—the designs of Mollie’s China for example. 

     And finally, yes DiCaprio as ERNEST BURKHART carries the picture as a himbo (he adequately portrays with a slouch) who breezes into a life of leisure and privilege that gets him in way over his head so gradually it’s kind of poetic. But the final jab Killers of the Flower Moon hit me with is its moral condemnation of both white man and Osage who don’t work for a living. That’s what makes it relevant beyond only serving as merely a historic artifact. It’s a corrosive critique of the American way of life. 

 

10/19/2023 AMC Madison Yards 8

Atlanta, GA

DCP