I have to admit, the anticipation for this Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon is killing me. Luckily, the movie is slated to hit theaters this Friday, and I couldn’t be more excited.
And for those of y’all who haven’t heard much about it yet, the movie is based off David Grann’s 2017 best selling novel, and Scorsese gave a rundown of the plot in a recent interview:
“Killers of the Flower Moon was a series of murders of Osage men and women to bilk them after the discovery of oil on their land. I was drawn to the idea of to tell this terribly tragic story that was never brought to national attention.
One of the keys that I was drawn to this work where friendship and love existed with latent extortion, exploitation, and murder.”
The only potential downfall of the movie I noticed ahead of time, was the insanely long 3.5-hour runtime. However, when you have a star studded cast featuring the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Brendan Fraser, Jesse Plemons, along with some country singers making their way into the cast listing as well, including Sturgill Simpson, Randy Houser, and Jason Isbell, people’s heads are going to turn and fill up the seats.
An official premiere of the movie went down yesterday in Los Angeles, where much of the cast and crew made an appearance to watch the finalized project. That included Osage tribe leader Christopher Cote, who was a language consultant on the movie as well. Needless to say, he wasn’t necessarily thrilled with how the movie turned out.
He said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he wasn’t content with how main Osage character Mollie was portrayed. He argued that she should’ve been the focus of the story, not Leonardo DiCaprio’s character:
“As an Osage, I really wanted this to be from the perspective of Mollie and what her family experienced, but I think it would take an Osage to do that.
Martin Scorsese not being Osage, I think he did a great job representing our people, but this history is being told almost from the perspective of Ernest Burkhart and they kind of give him this conscience and kind of depict that there’s love.
But when somebody conspires to murder your entire family, that’s not love. That’s not love, that’s just beyond abuse.”
Of course, when you’re spending millions and millions to make a movie with an all-star cast like this one has, of course the focus is going to be on those A-list stars. Cote adds that he understands that this film wasn’t made for Osage people, but hopes that it will make people think when they watch it:
“I think in the end, the question that you can be left with is: How long will you be complacent with racism? How long will you go along with something and not say something, not speak up, how long will you be complacent?
I think that’s because this film isn’t made for an Osage audience, it was made for everybody, not Osage. For those that have been disenfranchised, they can relate, but for other countries that have their acts and their history of repression, this is an opportunity for them to ask themselves this question of morality, and that’s how I feel about this film.”
Check out the official trailer:
