The story-line attracted me, plus there was Leonardo Di Caprio and my old hero Robert de Niro as leads. But I balked at the run-time of Killers of the Flower Moon. 3.5 hours is almost as long as Gone with the Wind; that’s a very looong movie. In the end I found myself in an almost empty cinema on a week-day morning. There were just 5 other people besides me crazy enough to sit through the whole thing with no intermission for breather/toilet breaks. Yes, it was that engrossing; at least for me.
When the movie popped up on my fb, my first thought was what a strange title for a show. But apparently there’s a season in Oklahoma when blooming flowers die as taller plants crowd them out. So the Osage refers to it as the time of the flower-killing moon. And it’s really an apt metaphor considering the horrifying real-life tale of “big people” (whites) literally killing off “small people ”(the Osage natives).
I had read a bit about the serial murders of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma which was the subject of a 2017 best-seller written by journalist David Grann. Known as the Reign of Terror, it stretched from 1921 to 1926. According to Wikipedia, some 60 or more “wealthy, full-blood Osage persons were reported killed from 1918 to 1931.. Further research has shown that the death toll may have been in the hundreds.” All for money. It was that simple – greed. Because the Osage tribe was sitting on oil land, and had become the richest people in the world at that time. The only catch was the law assigned them a guardian (almost always a white man) who controlled their money. No surprise that these guardians withheld, stole and killed to get the Osage inheritance. Even the town undertaker not only charges Osage much more than whites for funerals but steals precious stuff from their dead. Talk about robbery. How can one not be angry at such exploitation, oppression and injustice? But to murder in cold blood just to cash in on the natives’ oil rights and insurance policies takes evil to another level altogether.
The 2 male stars fleshed out their screen characters very well. Di Caprio has aged considerably from his Titanic days, but his portrayal as Ernest, the white man who married Mollie, a full-blood Osage is excellent. The way he knits his brow and purses his lips as he allows himself to be manipulated by his uncle into marrying Mollie and committing murders purely to cheat and rob has me wondering - does he really not know it’s wrong? Throw in an 80 year old Robert De Niro as William Hale who certainly takes the cake as the villain and mastermind, hiding so well behind a mask of charity and kindness, as the self-proclaimed king of the Osage hills . Add a bunch of petty criminals who have no qualms about being paid to kill. End result is a picture of really bad guys running around creating fear and havoc amongst a people who is transitioning from being a “colored native” to “civilised (?) modernity.” The opening scene is so potent – the Osage elders are mourning the passing of their traditional way of life by burying their ceremonial pipe, even as they anticipate a brand new world with their new-found wealth. Little did they know they would soon be burying many of their dead.
I have never heard of Lily Gladstone who plays Mollie, but she is one heck of an actress. Nothing of the pretty delicate damsel being swept off her feet by the white knight in shining armour. No Barbie doll here. Beautiful in all her plain-ness. She doesn’t say much, maybe it’s what she doesn’t say that packs so much depth. At first I couldn’t understand why she reported herself “Incompetent” to a guy sitting behind a desk. I cannot imagine having to report myself as “Incompetent” to an outsider to get what’s rightfully the proceeds from my own land….Even when I or my family members are sick, or I wanna go on a trip, I must "justify", like beg permission to use my own money…. Oh, the sheer ignominy and ridiculousness of it all.
Mollie lost all her family members – mother, 2 sisters, brother-in-law, and cousin; who all died either violently or in suspicious circumstances. Even whites allied to them were not spared. No investigation was conducted into any of the numerous prior deaths that had occurred amongst the tribe. It took the newly created Bureau of Investigation (precursor of the FBI) to come down all the way from Washington to take over the reins and the plot. Of course good always triumphs over evil. So everything unravels and truth has its day in court.
There’s a scene when Hale states pointedly to the impressionable Ernest “..the miracles that happened in the bible don’t happen anymore, don’t you know that?” To which Ernest replies, "Of course I know that." Well, looks like the end result proved them wrong. Truth prevailed despite all the wheeling and dealing to suppress it. That’s a miracle in itself. Especially when Ernest as the star witness had already been intimidated, confused and convinced not to testify for the prosecution. Only the death of his child did something in his heart to spill the beans. Miracles are of the divine, and only God can touch the deepest depths of the human heart to respond, totally out of expectation. Truly God’s ways are higher than man’s.
It's sad though how Mollie has to deal with the heart-break of knowing in the end that the man who professed to love her can so judiciously and “caringly” poison her everyday. Bad enough she knows he married her for her money, but there was surely some love in it somewhere along the line. Even if he's simple-minded, surely Ernest would have at least suspected that it’s the “medicine” that’s killing her slowly but surely, and not some mysterious wasting disease? If he really loves her, does he not feel anything, executing the murders of her family – his own extended family? How true as the Bible puts it in Jeremiah 17:9 “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”
The truth is we are so deceived by our own hearts we can’t see our wickedness. So the mastermind culprit Hale insists the Osage people still support him, despite Ernest telling him it’s all over. Amazingly he’s so confident, saying “…There might be some insurrection for a while. But then people forget that. They don't remember and they don't care. It will be another ordinary everyday tragedy.” What kind of heart considers murdering people, scheming to steal away another’s property and inheritance an ordinary everyday tragedy? It’s not tragedy, it’s travesty.
But that’s how we can so easily deceive ourselves, seeing only what we want to see. Indeed Hale doesn’t “get it”; even in prison serving a life sentence, he is writing letters to the Osage espousing his undying friendship and love for them. The worse part is he honestly believes himself. He was paroled after 18 years and according to official records, “he never admitted to the murders, and a psychological evaluator noted "he has put behind him any feeling of shame or repentance he may have had (Wikipedia). Isn’t that the typical inherent nature of mankind, refusing to see/admit we are wrong, that we are all sinners in the eyes of a most holy God, who sits as the righteous Judge over all.
The miracle is despite all the evil that man do, despite all the terrible things that keep happening all over the world, God causes everything (including all the bad) to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). So even back then, in the throes of the horrible Reign of Terror, in 1925, the United States Congress passed a law to bar the inheritance of Osage headrights by non-Osage people. Of course it’s not just the Osage people. It’s a historical fact that the first peoples of many nations have been unfairly treated, oppressed and deprived of their rights. So the billion-dollar question that man always ask : Why can’t/won’t God stop the bad things instead of letting them happen? Well, perhaps instead of questioning God, we should be asking ourselves why we do or don’t do this or that. Mayhap then we will see ourselves as we really are, through His eyes. After all, God has already given mankind the miracle solution - Jesus Christ who came, died and rose again to set all things right.
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