November is Native American Heritage Month in the US, intended to provide Native people with a platform and opportunity to share their culture, history, and traditions with the wider American population. The release of Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour historical epic on the 20th October seemed appropriately timed.
The film tells the true story of the systematic murders of the Osage Native Americans in the 1920’s by white colonial descendants greedy to claim the oil-rich lands of the Osage for themselves. The film’s reception in the mainstream press has been overwhelmingly positive, but does Killers of the Flower Moon really do justice to the tragedy endured by the Osage people?
The film predominantly follows Leonardo diCaprio’s character, the interminably thick, uncomprehending Ernest Burkhart who is encouraged by his uncle, William King Hale (a sinister Robert De Niro), to pursue marriage to Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone, magnetic and quietly brilliant). Mollie is a ‘full blood’ Osage Native and Ernest’s marriage to her will secure his family with access to her oil wealth.
I was surprised and somewhat confused that a film intended to tell the true story of barbarity inflicted on the Osage natives was led by such an unremarkable, stupid, and white character as Ernest. It would have made more sense and been more sensitive to the subject matter of the film to establish Mollie as its narrative centre.
Cameos from Jesse Plemons and Brendan Fraser contributed further to the centring of famous white faces in the film and seemed strange and misjudged for that reason. Though I suppose the reverse argument could be made that these big Hollywood names raised the profile of a film about a persecuted minority.
The film’s other major issue was the incredibly graphic, gratuitous depiction of violence. Perhaps it could be contested that such brutal portrayals of murder serve merely as an accurate representation of what the Osage endured. But the violence was so extreme as to become desensitising and, arguably, sensationalising of the experiences of the Osage people.
The best parts of the film were those which focused directly on Osage culture and experience. The opening scene of the film saw Osage elders burying a ceremonial pipe and lamenting the inevitable acculturation of their children into white American society. A later scene showed Mollie’s mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal) experiencing visions of an owl, a harbinger of her approaching death, and later again, as she dies she has another vision of her ancestors welcoming her to the afterlife.
These depictions of Osage culture, emotion, and modes of seeing were presented with apparent care and sensitivity. It was a shame that they were all too few and far between, serving as more of a background to the central story of the murders.
Killers of the Flower Moon might have benefitted from taking inspiration from War Pony (2022). Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s directorial debut tells the parallel stories of 12-year-old Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) and 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), two Oglala Lakota boys living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was the debut of both actors, both cast from the reservation. The script was written by Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob, Indians who grew up on the ‘rez’ where the film is set and upon whose lives Matho and Bill’s stories are based. Keough and Gammell worked hard against financiers and executives who wanted to introduce a sympathetic white character to the film to give white viewers an ‘entry point’.
The film dodges harmful stereotypes about the bleakness and poverty of reservation life, but also avoids romanticising the Native experience. As Native American writer Sherman Alexie has said in an interview, ‘it’s not all corn pollen, eagle feathers, Mother Earth, Father Sky. It’s everyday life’.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely War Pony would have been made without Keough’s name at its helm, but the film is based on real lives rather than white assumptions. It highlights the realities, conflicts, and beauty present in everyday reservation life, and was built on a principle of collaboration with the Lakota Indians.
Native American stories are in exceedingly short supply in the mainstream media, especially on the scale of Killers of the Flower Moon. There is a depressing irony in it being lauded as it has when it fails to centre the victims of the very tragedy it tells the story of. When white people tell Native American stories it should be with the aim of providing a platform for Native voices, rather than dominating those stories with white narratives.
On a more hopeful note, perhaps Killers of the Flower Moon will open the door to greater recognition of Native talent in the film industry, and to increasing awareness and interest in Native American cultures more generally.