{"id":10696,"date":"2023-11-01T08:36:44","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T12:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10696"},"modified":"2024-02-15T07:57:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T12:57:55","slug":"killers-of-the-flower-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10696","title":{"rendered":"Killers of the Flower Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You think three hours and 26 minutes makes for an awfully long movie? You\u2019re right. Yet, Martin Scorsese\u2019s true-crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>, completely held my attention throughout (trailer<\/a>). Even though I knew the story, because I\u2019d read the fascinating book by David Grann that the movie is based on, still there were no saggy lulls. It is time well spent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times<\/a><\/em> calls it \u201cAn Unsettling Masterpiece,\u201d which recounts the terrible outcomes of white men\u2019s unrelenting, murderous greed when oil is quite unexpectedly discovered on the Oklahoma lands that had been considered so worthless they might as well be given to the Osage tribe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had a complaint, it would be that there was too much attention to Robert DeNiro as the \u201cKing of the Osage Hills,\u201d cattleman William Hale. (Hale even asks people to call him \u201cKing.\u201d) He gives an excellent performance, but, unlike the other characters, he doesn\u2019t change; he\u2019s the same throughout\u2014a malicious, manipulative, avaricious local operator\u2014and you understand him from the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leonardo DiCaprio sets aside any vanity and is neither handsome nor savvy in playing Ernest Burkhart, Hale\u2019s nephew. Because the tribe members are deemed incompetent to manage their assets, they are required to have white guardians. A quick way for a white man to become a guardian is to marry an Osage woman, just as Burkhart marries Mollie Kyle, memorably played by Lily Gladstone. Then if the wife dies . . . you can guess the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the oil, in the early 1920s, Osage members were the per capita richest people in the world. Much too tempting a target for undereducated, unprincipled roughnecks. Believe me, you\u2019re grateful when Jesse Pelmons as Tom White, an agent of J.Edgar Hoover\u2019s nascent FBI, appears on the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie was filmed on a grand scale in Oklahoma, though there are plenty of intimate, emotion-packed moments in which Mollie and Ernest demonstrate real love for each other. Her penetrating gaze recognizes Hale and Burkhart\u2019s schemes, but loves her husband anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film is dedicated to Robbie Robertson, whose last project was composing its music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning, there is what seems an unnecessary statement by Scorsese about why he made this movie. That opening fits when he gives its closing words as well, bookending the film during a creative approach to telling \u201cwhat happened next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ill-treatment of indigenous people was one of America\u2019s two greatest original sins and, in the arc of history, this sorry episode was not so very long ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 93%; audiences: 85%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You think three hours and 26 minutes makes for an awfully long movie? You\u2019re right. Yet, Martin Scorsese\u2019s true-crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, completely held my attention throughout (trailer). Even though I knew the story, because I\u2019d read … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"I wasn't put off by the length of this movie and was completely engaged every minute. Some stories can't be told in a soundbite.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,52,366,266,57,35,104,1596],"tags":[1705,2032],"class_list":["post-10696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-crime","category-drama","category-history","category-movies","category-real-life","category-the-morgue","category-true-crime","tag-killers-of-the-flower-moon","tag-martin-scorsese"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Mw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10696"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10837,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10696\/revisions\/10837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}