Killers of the Flower Moon
Short description
Killers of the Flower Moon is set in 1920s Oklahoma, where oil found beneath Osage Nation land makes the Osage community wealthy and draws the attention of white settlers determined to take that wealth for themselves. Ernest Burkhart arrives in the area and comes under the influence of his uncle, the powerful rancher William Hale, who urges him to court Mollie Kyle, a woman from a prosperous Osage family. As members of the Osage tribe die in growing numbers under suspicious circumstances, a newly created federal agency, the FBI, opens an investigation.
Martin Scorsese directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth. The film is the thirty-fifth directed by Scorsese in chronological order, following Uncut Gems and preceding BLEU DE CHANEL, and he also produced it. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, Robert De Niro plays William Hale, and Lily Gladstone plays Mollie Burkhart, with Jesse Plemons as Tom White, the investigator leading the inquiry. The large production involved 211 credited cast members and 250 credited crew members.
The film runs 206 minutes. It was made for a reported budget of 200 million USD and earned about 159 million USD worldwide, a return below its cost. On IMDb it holds 7.5/10 from roughly 304,000 votes, and on TMDB it has 7.4/10 from about 4,358 votes. A critics' rating of 8.6/10 from 473 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to director Martin Scorsese, as soon as he read the book, he decided to make a film based on it. Scorsese spent several hours persuading the Osage tribe, with the help of a chief named Standing Bear, to assist with filming.
- For the scenes depicting her character’s illness, Lily Gladstone went on a strict diet for two weeks and lost over 13 kilograms (approximately 28 pounds).
- In the scene where Robert De Niro’s character slaps Leonardo DiCaprio’s character with a wooden paddle, De Niro hit with all his might, unrestrained, while DiCaprio wore special protective padding under his costume.
- Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the limited number of films being made, Lily Gladstone had already decided to leave the acting profession when Martin Scorsese offered her the role.
- The film mentions individuals with restricted rights. In one scene near the beginning of the film, Mollie, played by Lily Gladstone, asks for a certain amount of money to pay for treatment. There was a belief that the Osage tribe was unable to manage their own money, and all their financial matters were handled by white guardians. If an Osage woman married a white man, he automatically became her financial guardian. A significant portion of the guardians were appointed by the courts. For this role, judges typically selected people they knew, and they gained financial control, which led to the misuse of funds on an unimaginable scale. When the Osage tried to object and file complaints, their petitions were not even considered.
- Filming was initially scheduled to begin in March 2020, but had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
- For the sake of filming with Scorsese, Jesse Plemons had to turn down a role in "Nope," and the role went to Steven Yeun.
- The language spoken by the Osage tribe has no written form, so director and screenwriter Martin Scorsese invented it together with linguist Noam Chomsky, borrowing heavily from the Navajo language and the so-called Minion language.
- Initially, it was assumed that DiCaprio would play Tom White. However, the actor insisted on being given the role of Ernest Burkhart. According to Paramount Pictures, the new script was turning the film into a dark psychological drama, and work on the film was transferred to Apple Studios.
- According to Martin Scorsese, he decided to appear on screen in the radio station scene to read the obituary because he was unsure he could find an actor who could express sincerity with his voice mid-scene. Furthermore, Scorsese wanted to emphasize his own attitude towards the murders of the Osage tribe members.
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