Best films of 2023 in the UK: No 3 – Killers of the Flower Moon
Scorsese altered the central axis of his film to inclusivity – and made a radical film about a crime at the birth of modern America look seamless and rich, aided by amazing acting
Consideration for the sensitivities of ethnic minorities has never been much of a concern for Martin Scorsese: a cursory glance at the back catalogue shows he has spent his career alternately trashing and ridiculing Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans. (Your classic Wasp-Americans get it in the neck in his glossy period literary adaptation The Age of Innocence.) Which is why his late-breaking pivot to unusual levels of respect and collaboration with the Osage tribal nation for Killers of the Flower Moon resulted in such an interesting and – for Scorsese at least – radically different kind of film.
It wouldn’t be possible to tell the gruesome story of the Osage murders any other way. An absolutely emblematic example of incomers’ greed, manipulation of the law, “manifest destiny” and cold inhumanity, it’s a narrative that still chills the blood to this day. Scorsese’s approach – apparently prompted by co-star Leonardo DiCaprio – was to move away from the police procedural line taken by the source text by David Grann and carefully extract a slice of human drama: the story of Mollie Kyle, who survived the killings, and her husband, Ernest Burkhart. Their relationship is scrutinised in forensic detail, and invested fully with the ambivalence both are assumed to feel. Hence the enormous running time: extraordinary for a film that has no physically arduous journey at its heart. Scorsese’s film actually wears its size incredibly lightly – no wonder he was irritated at suggestions it needed a toilet break.
