A revision of our society at large.
The stunning cinematography in this film guided me throughout it. From the opening scene, with the Osage dancing to the findings of oil, through the idyllic moments of the wedding where the light hits the characters and the water just right, to the doomy feeling of the final funeral, every scene creates an atmosphere that adequately depicts the overall tone of it.
Thematically, at least at first, this is close to There Will Be Blood (2007), where we see DDL create an empire disregarding human lives that may be affected by it. The Hale family is doing the same: running after money without any concerns towards human life, especially because that life is not a life of people they can relate to. The people they affect are in no way close to them. Not historically, not genetically, not religiously. It is only in this juncture of time that they meet one another, and their goals in life are diametrically opposed: while they white folks want to gather as much money as possible, their Osage counterparts just want to live their lives in peace.
At some point in the film, a white person says “When have you seen an Osage work in their lives?”, and this question resonated at a deeper level for me. There is the fact that Western ideology suggests working, since it is necessary that we work for us to be our own masters. This is a core idea in Locke that Marx popularised eventually. Work liberates us. Or so they might make us think. The entrance to Auschwitz said precisely Arbeit macht frei, work makes us free.
Work is the quintessential thing in our contemporary societies: our lives are defined only in relation to our work schedules. Sleeping is no longer mandated by a biological imperative but in the time that we have left after doing our daily chores. The dictum about cutting up our days is 8 hrs working, 8 hrs sleeping and 8 hrs leisure time. Is this imposed on us by the regulations of work? In countries with not such harsh regulation over work, the rule switches and we ought to have less leisure time (or sleeping time).
All this work talk leads me to a point which is poignantly depicted in this film. That of who gets their hands dirty. It is never the rich, those well-off that have to do it. It is the lowlifes, those in such a need of an extra 20 dollars that will murder for them. The values have been inverted and life exists only in relation to who can make money; and those who cannot, can be disposed of.
The creators and their (past) creations
Another interesting element that we see in this film (and throughout their partnership, I should say) is the range that Scorsese has been able to get out of De Niro, even in the previous movie they worked on, The Irishman (2019), we see a De Niro getting his hands dirty, being the one that has to run errands. But we also see the brilliant performance of Taxi Driver, where the insanity is as present as De Niro’s acting presence. In Killers of the Flower Moon, we see a De Niro who is moving the strings, who is the boss of this family, who is the King of the county.
Gladstone delivers a performance, which, by the very nature of her character, cannot be described in a word other than graceful. The impactful moments are wholly experienced through a face that seems to be at rest but that on closer inspection it is anything but that.
DiCaprio’s role in this films seems to stand out amongst his other works with Scorsese. Recalling both The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Shutter Island (2010), he is the lead, the one who guides the storyline with his own volition, but his character here is that of a dog, a layman who can only be told what to do because he does not have a mind of his own, and that is also praisable.
The nature of violence
This movie has very minimal depicted violence, and when it is, it is very quickly shown to let the viewer know that it happened. While the earlier Scorsese would depict violence in a very graphic manner (such as that depiction in Taxi Driver), the later Scorsese is able to show that violence is not necessarily exerted upon somebody by means of beating them up or shooting them, but rather, at its core, violence is something much more nuanced, that takes different forms and can be more lethal than a beating. At times in this movie Gladstone can, with such power, show that she is practically suffocated even if she is not being so.
The distinction between Objective and Subjective violence in Marx sheds some light in this movie: while Subjective violence is attributable to a particular person or group, Objective violence is referred to the system. By design, some will be violented and there is nothing it can be done for them. Following economical freedom, laissez-fare type of dogma, then it is only logical that the Osage would have to be displaced by those who are willing to take what they believe is rightfully theirs. Scorsese (and Grann’s book in which this movie is based on) brings back the focal point to the specific actors who are actually hurting, being violent. All the roads and hospitals and schools in their objective nature cannot justify the subjective suffering they are making the Osage nation go through.
And that final scene, in which we see Scorsese pronounce himself, shows perfectly that naming these violent acts is necessary, for we ought to question if all this progress, all the roaring twenties is needed if with this entire groups of people will be eradicated in the name of it. What world do we want for ourselves? Scorsese asks this question throughout the entire movie and gives an answer at the end of it. And it would be dumb of us if we did not listen.