What "Killers of the Flower Moon" Taught Me About My Oklahoma Upbringing
#245: "Killers of the Flower Moon," "The Burial," "Rosemary's Baby," "Shaun of the Dead"
Edition 245:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: Martin Scorcese’s epic hits a little close to home. Then a new movie starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones that I barely knew existed, plus some Halloween-themed streaming suggestions. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” a whole field of Best Picture contenders gave us previews, and one stood out above the rest.
Killers of the Flower Moon
I grew up only about an hour’s drive from where the events depicted in Killers of the Flower Moon took place, and when I was in middle and high school, we used to laugh and joke about the people in our class who — despite their lily white skin and 2.3% blood ancestry — were card-carrying members of various Native American tribes, which came with perks like discounted college tuition. Until last week, it never once occurred to me that the source of that sliver of Indian blood might’ve come from rape or, as this movie spells out in excruciating detail, something even more sinister.
Martin Scorcese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic is a condemnation not just of the good ol’ boys of Oklahoma but white ambition and exploitation more broadly, painting a disturbing and often quite hopeless picture of the formation of modern America.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Osage tribe was one of the richest populations per capita in the country because they owned the rights to land under which they found a huge supply of oil. The movie, based on a non-fiction book by David Grann, tells the story of how the white population of the region systematically muscled them out of those rights through inter-marrying, political pressure and out-and-out murder.
The nominal stars of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, are at the center of the story, but are not protagonists. They aren’t even anti-heroes. They’re full-on antagonists, and they each turn in brilliant performances. De Niro is evil incarnate, a godfather mafioso type who manipulates the people in his life, among them the bumbling bozo DiCaprio, into doing his bidding.
Practically, what that means is that the movie is not very pleasant to watch. The production’s extreme and impressive dedication to realism renders a world that immerses a viewer entirely, only amplifying the weight that one (and by one, I suppose I mean a white person) is meant to feel while watching.
Stretch that feeling out over an insanely long runtime, and I think it will be nearly impossible for any viewer who waits to watch this on AppleTV+ to finish it in a single sitting. And considering its sort of anti-entertainment philosophy, not striving to “please” a viewer in any way, I think that will lead to a lot of people not liking the movie. That’s a shame. Seriously, go to a theater, both because of the pacing of the movie increases the effectiveness of the intended gut punch and because Scorcese is operating on a level of filmmaking that I don’t think can be fully appreciated on your laptop.
Technically, the movie is Scorcese at the peak of his powers. He creates some totally unforgettable visuals, his sets are gorgeous, his dialogue is razor sharp. No one can watch this movie — like it or not — and not notice the massive difference in the amount of care put into every detail between this and almost every other movie. This newsletter subscribes to the “auteur theory,” that a director is ultimately responsible for the authorship of a movie, but a movie like this reminds you of the incredible work that craftspeople can do, from production designer to costume designer to cinematographer.
Stylistically though this movie is almost anti-Scorcese. It’s not pop music and fast cutting and athletic camera movements. It’s not glamorous gangsters and machismo. It’s kind of a dismantling of his signature flash and pizazz, a full embrace of his elder statesman, defender of cinema role. This is a movie that’s meant to be Important, to be Cinema.
A shallow reading of the movie might use that to accuse him of moral grandstanding, an old white guy trying to mark himself as an ally (especially the way the movie ends, which I won’t spoil here). The more I think about it, however, I actually disagree. The movie goes out of its way to not define the good and evil within the central relationship between DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone — who, as almost every critic and viewer has noted, is the best part of this movie. They love each other and hurt each other in a very complicated, confusing and ultimately unresolved way. It’s another thing that may make the experience unsatisfying for casual viewers who are so used to clean lines between good guys and bad guys, but for earnest viewers there’s so much to discuss about this movie after the credits roll (and you mercifully take that bathroom break you’ve been waiting nearly four hours for).
Now that I’ve seen it, I can say pretty definitively that it’s too discouraging and too accusatory to win votes for Best Picture. Nominations out of respect, yes. But mounting a winning campaign requires enthusiasm and love that seems impossible for a film this negative.
I’d stop short of calling Killers a masterpiece, but it’s definitely the first movie of the year that feels like major cinema. Even despite its runtime I am looking forward to seeing it again in theaters, because there’s so many layers and nuances that I feel can still be discovered.
The real mark of its greatness is the way it makes people think not about the movie but about the history it’s depicting. It’s a history that they didn’t teach us about when I was growing up in Oklahoma. I thank the book and the movie for that. I’m sure I will probably be discovering and recontextualizing new things about my childhood there for the rest of my life.
Something New
The Burial (Amazon Prime): I feel like the streaming landscape is kind of broken when a new movie starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones can just drop on Amazon and (at least anecdotally) I don’t hear a single conversation about it. Did anyone reading this know this movie existed?
It’s a true story, about a helpless ol’ southern boy (Jones) who gets taken advantage of by a billionaire (Bill Camp, character actor extraordinaire) and sues for damages with the help of a flashy, made-for-TV attorney (Foxx). The main reason to watch this movie is Foxx, who I’ve always said may be the single most talented overall performer (acting, singing, comedy etc.) of my lifetime, and who is having a very busy year — They Cloned Tyrone (good), Strays (bombed), God is a Bullet (never heard of it), and now this, his fourth and by far best performance showcasing comedy, drama, nuance and otherworldly charisma. You can’t look away from him in every scene.
Even by the standards of Hollywood legal movies, the trial of this movie is ludicrously constructed, and the overall point of the movie gets lost a bit as the narrative drifts from the dispute between Lee and Camp to, essentially, trying to put racism in Mississippi on trial. Good luck with that. The whole is probably lesser than the sum of its parts, which include a handful of truly memorable scenes and supporting performances from no less than Alan Ruck as a garden variety racist. Despite its flaws, I do recommend this movie to any fans of straight-ahead, morally righteous courtroom dramas.
Something Old
Rosemary’s Baby (1968, AMC on-demand): Halloween is this upcoming week, and I’m the first to admit I’m way behind on my horror franchises. That’s why I’ve decided to recommend some classic cinema instead! So much of modern horror owes a debt to Roman Polanski’s paranoid thriller starring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, which more or less launched “the something from hell” genre (Fatal Attraction: “the mistress from hell” etc.).
Basically, a young couple move into an apartment in New York City when all of a sudden weird stuff starts happening to them. Not like oh the neighbors are making noise weird. More like, my wife is suddenly, mysteriously pregnant weird. It’s one of the most influential horror movies ever made, and I think essential viewing for understanding cinema history. Why not check it out this Halloween season rather than, I don’t know, watching Hocus Pocus again for the millionth time.
Something to Stream
Shaun of the Dead (Hulu): Does this count as a Halloween movie, since it has zombies in it?? It’s certainly not horror, but this propulsive comedy might be the very best version of Edgar Wright’s frenetic, sensory-overload style of filmmaking. Frequent collaborator Simon Pegg cowrites and stars as a kind of loser dude who just wants to grab a few drinks at the pub with his mates, when he’s rudely interrupted by a zombie apocalypse.
It’s legitimately one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and its relentless energy makes the 1hr39min runtime go buy in the blink of an eye. I realize I’m skirting around the spirit of the season, and maybe I need to recommend a bunch of true Halloween classics for myself to watch this week, but I promise you none of them will be as entertaining as Shaun of the Dead.
Trailer Watch: American Fiction
Now that we know (or at least I’m quite confident) that Killers of the Flower Moon can’t seriously contend with Oppenheimer for Best Picture, attention turns to the swath of contenders who released full-length trailers this week — Maestro, Ferrari, The Zone of Interest, Saltburn, Leave the World Behind, The Boys in the Boat. Now, we can discuss each of their chances to win, if we want, but that’s quite different from what could be the best movie.
On that criteria, one fall release rises above the rest based on the trailers. I cannot wait to see what writer/director Cord Jefferson — who has written some of the most poignant episodes of Masters of None, Watchmen and Station Eleven — does with this story about a frustrated novelist who jokingly writes a parody gangster book that suddenly catches fire because it confirms what America “wants” from its Black writers. It looks funny and incisive and super sharp. I’m all-in.