Movie Review - Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers of the Flower Moon by Apple Original Films is in the running for the best film of the year, and it is blowing the other movies in contention out of the water. It's a brutal and sad film that looks at the crimes against the Osage people and what exactly happened during that time in our history.
I don’t know if it is this way for every viewing of the movie but when I went and watched the movie, I was met with Scorsese on screen talking to us the viewers about how important this movie was to him, and it shows. This movie is beautiful, how much it means to him comes across in the way he does certain things.
Every camera movement from panning up to show certain items and down to show others tells a story in and of itself in the movie. The cast in this movie is what elevates it to an entirely other level.
Leonardo Decaprio as Earnest Burkhart looks, sounds, and acts like they just picked him up out of that time frame and put him in a movie. He has the mannerisms of someone who returned from war back into a world he wasn’t too familiar with down like he has been doing it his whole life.
Lily Gladstone is great as Molly Burkhart, I had never heard of Gladstone before this movie and I am upset that I hadn’t because she is a great actress, the way that she can express without using her words is done better than most actresses that have been doing this for years.
Then you have Robert De Niro, perhaps my favorite performance of this entire movie. He plays a great villain especially one that tricks both the audience and the other characters about what his true intentions and plans are.
If you were not familiar with the Osage murders before I would strongly recommend this movie to you. Scorsese does a great job telling the story of what happened to the Osage during this time. Choosing to film in Oklahoma was a great choice because it lends to the feel of the movie.
These events happened in Oklahoma so not only are you filming it where the actual events took place, but Oklahoma is beautiful state, so the scenery is breathtaking. The way they incorporate Osage traditions, and their language is done perfectly. They don’t just shove it in in random places because they can, it is there throughout the movie even if it is subtle. It makes it feel like you are apart of the culture while at the same time making you feel lost.
When they speak short phrases or words in the Osage language, they don’t use subtitles. I think this works well because it helps you feel like the white men in the movie, they don’t really know what they are saying and neither do you. Some of the dialogue in this movie especially in the beginning helps set the tone for certain scenes very well. For the start of the movie when Earnest is in the cab and asks the Osage cab driver whose land it is, and the cabbie responds with “It’s mine”. This helps the audience understand what kind of people the protagonists are.
I don’t have many complaints with this movie but the one complaint I do have is with the length. I do not believe that this movie needs to be 3 hours and 30 minutes in length. I knew the length going into the movie and at about the 2-hour mark I looked at the time and audibly went, “I can’t believe we still have 1 more hour of this.”
I feel that this movie would have been better if they either cut an hour off the movie or if it was a miniseries. I know that seeing a movie of that length can be intimidating to a lot of people but despite me thinking it is too long, I think this movie deserves it more so than any others.
This film has a lot of story to tell and I know that if it was any shorter it would not be able to tell it as beautifully as it does, but still the movie being as long as it is may turn people off from watching it. If you are one of those people let me tell you firsthand go see this movie. You will get so engrossed in the story that you won’t even notice the runtime and it will be over before you realize it.
I am so happy they did not give this movie a happy ending, and that they went with the bittersweet ending instead. This movie is based off real historical facts, history does not always have happy endings and changing it for something like this does not do justice to what happened. Keeping the ending as close to what actually happened despite it being bittersweet was the right call and people may not be happy with it, but it makes the movie better. Everyone gets the ending that they deserve, and it leaves you feeling fulfilled at the end.
Apple announced it would re-release Killers of the Flower Moon in over 1,000 theatres globally, beginning this Friday, January 26. The film is also on streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Vudu, and YouTube.