Global Courant 2023-05-21 02:14:04
Almost an hour and a half in line to enter a cinema? You wouldn’t wait that long to eat at a recommended restaurant, but to see Killers of the Flower Moon, the new Martin Scorsese movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, yes.
And if it rains, as it happened from time to time, too.
Leonardo DiCaprio, arriving on the red carpet of the film. His is the most obnoxious character he has ever played. Photo Reuters
Both the Sala Lumière, where the Gala was held and the three aforementioned artists were present, and the Debussy (reserved for the press) were full, with tickets sold out for four days, as soon as they were able to book online.
DiCaprio, Scorsese and De Niro: At the end, there was a 9-minute standing ovation in the room. Photo Reuters
The story is real, and we’ll see how the director adapted it, who hadn’t set foot in the Lumière Room since After Hours, in 1985. Although hardly shorter than The Irishman, his previous film, the 206-minute adaptation of the journalist David Grann’s book are not felt in the body. Scorsese is one of the few Hollywood filmmakers who have passed 70 years (he is already 80) who has modernized himself, who has no ups and downs or movies to regret.
In the 1920s, members of the Osage Native community were the richest Americans per capita, after oil wells were discovered beneath their badlands. Of course the white supremacists were not going to agree to this, and a series of gruesome murders and disappearances began to take place.
Tomorrow will be the day that DiCaprio and the rest of the team speak to the press. Photo Reuters
The film shows how these deaths remain unresolved, and even how a death is labeled a suicide, when we see that this woman is shot by a man who then puts the gun in her hand.
Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio, Calculin hairstyle) arrives in Fairfax, that area of Oklahoma. When he gets off the train, they are waiting for him to take him to see his uncle, a kind of landowner, but without oil. Bill Hale (Robert De Niro) asks him to call him what he used to call him: King. He’s the most despicable guy in the area, one who plays nice but runs the town, sheriff included, and is behind the defrauding of at least one Osage family.
There is a scene that De Niro and DiCaprio share that is going to make people talk…
And this is how this newcomer “hero” of the First World War (although he was only a cook) finds a way to progress, and become rich. His uncle soon convinces him that he should marry Mollie (Lili Gladstone), whose Osage net worth is sky-high. And, curiously, little by little his sisters and his mother are dying.
The calculation is simple: the entire fortune will go to the Hale family. Ernest, of course. And if something happened to him, to his uncle King of him.
The trio, at the entrance to the Lumière Room. The film will be released in theaters only in October (the long weekend). AFP photo
It was not difficult to defraud the Osage, since they were certified as “incompetent” and needed some assigned target to manage their funds. Another form of exploitation is signing insurance policies, as King does with Henry Roan (William Belleau). And we already sense what King is going to do.
Violent, but not that violent
All in all, Killers of the Flower Moon is not one of the most violent films from the director of Gangs of New York -OK, there is a head smashed from the nape-. As certain as that the natives, whenever they can, assure that those who have committed those murders will be charged. Because they know that nobody in the government cares about clarifying the murders. And they’re going to have to pay to get someone to investigate.
Leo and Lili Gladstone, his character’s wife, a wealthy Osage native.
We said that Scorsese privileged something over other aspects of the novel. It is not so much the investigation of the newly formed FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover (who is only mentioned), or about a white savior (Agent Tom White, who is made up of Jesse Plemons), nor is the victim followed, the Osages.
No. Scorsese, who always loved the bad guys, the corrupt, those who can commit acts of violence without moving a hair – especially if they don’t get their hands dirty, but order them. The director of Taxi Driver chose a point of view – that of the criminals, and not the others. He usually does it in his gangster movies, why shouldn’t he do it with DiCaprio’s and De Niro’s?
Two old friends, Scorsese and De Niro, worked together on “Taxi Driver” and “Casino,” among others. Photo Reuters
DiCaprio has the most disgusting role he’s ever cast in his career, and none of this has to do with him scowling for most of the footage. He must make decisions that run him from morality, and as in Once upon a time… in Hollywood, in which Tarantino made him cry on camera, here he must show himself vulnerable. Weak, but if he loves himself, ruthless.
But what is a luxury is to see De Niro, how King tricks DiCaprio’s Ernest with his snake’s tongue. They are two different types of performances, which Scorsese knows how to handle with a firm hand.
And there is a scene, that of De Niro’s chás chás to Dicaprio that will surely be talked about a lot when it opens in theaters (and on AppleTV +, later), starting in October.
Ernest starts out looking naive, but DiCaprio’s character takes a twist…
And such is the difference between what Scorsese focuses on De Niro and DiCaprio, that both Jesse Plemons and the recovered Brendan Fraser (even if he looks like he came straight out of The Whale) can hardly do anything with their roles.
And the Osages? Well, thank you, they are something like extras at someone else’s party, even though the director chooses to open and close the film with the native community.
De Niro is the one who controls the reins in Fairfax, the small town where his nephew (DiCaprio) arrives.
The Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who has been Scorsese’s eye in his latest films, shines in every choice of colors, and in particular there is a scene that dazzles. Bathed in gold, actually a rabid yellow from the fire, in which there is a burning field, with the figures of peasants interrupted.
Perhaps too long, Killers of the Flower Moon is a spectacle to see on the big screen. We will remember him in October.
