Killers of the Flower Moon: 3.5 Hours Isn’t Even Enough.
It doesn’t take much for Martin Scorsese to get bums in seats for his movies. With the flash of his name in a trailer, cinephiles from all around the globe are at the theaters buying tickets. But what about when the run time is 3 hours and 26 minutes?
Scorsese isn’t known for making 90-minute films, but damn… some of us have work in the morning! No one has time for Peter-Jackson-length sagas anymore; we’re all running on TikTok attention spans. During the quarantine days of the pandemic, watching Scorsese’s The Irishman for 3 hours and 29 minutes on Netflix wasn’t so bad, but now that we’re no longer hoarding quarantine toilet paper, I must admit that I had serious apprehension committing to a movie that length in the theater.
So how did it go?
The story, even at its modest pace, was engaging from start to finish. It was an exceptionally good movie. I am a self-professed phone-addicted millennial, but I didn’t pick up my phone once. The second the film started, I was sucked in. I couldn’t look away. The length of this film is justified, unlike Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004). If the movie had been any shorter it would have been a disservice and injustice to the Osage people in Oklahoma. Like many of Scorsese’s films, Killers of the Flower Moon is the telling of a dark human experience mixed with tragic love, guns, and betrayal. The story can only be told in its entirety. If he were to cut out even a single segment of the story, it would skew viewers into a false perception of life between white Americans and the Osage people during this time in Fairfax, Oklahoma.
Even as long as it is, the film omits the barometer of the political system at this time. There is a brief mention of the county and state government’s failure to investigate the numerous murders of the Osage, but that is not enough to grasp the amount of prejudice and inhumane treatment of American Indian/Alaskan Natives by the government during this period in history. There is a plot point where the Osage people send representatives to Washington D.C. to meet with the President of the United States. It’s only then that law enforcement comes to aid in the investigation into the Osage murderers.
An easy criticism of the film is that, while the story of the Osage is being told, you see it from the perspective of two white men. If the film was meant to share the experiences of the Osage, one may think the leading role would be Osage. However, Martin Scorsese - being a white man himself - couldn’t create a film from the perspective of one of the Osage. It would be disrespectful for him to try to tell the Osage’s story because it isn’t his to tell. So, despite it being impossible for the film to be a perfect representation of every individual’s experience and the fact that there are certainly still crimes that remain untold, this film was a classic Scorsese masterpiece. Until there are more American Indian/Alaskan Natives behind the camera telling their stories themselves, Scorsese’s attempt to partner with the Osage to tell their story is an admirable attempt.
The movie is prefaced with a brief talk from Scorsese about how he went about partnering with the Osage people. He talks about their role in the production of the movie and his efforts to portray the story in the way they wanted it to be told. This intro was insightful and helped the audience understand the intricacies and challenges behind making a film that addresses such somber subject matter. It added a layer of respect that was needed to tell this heartbreaking tale.
Scorsese appears again at the very end of the film in a 4th wall scene, where the story of the Osage is being told within the context of a true crime radio program. This is Scorsese’s warning to our society that the true crime podcasts and documentaries we eat up are about real people with real experiences, alluding to the fact that our work for justice is far from done.
If you go see it, let me know what you think on X and IG. You can find me by searching for @emmiwitdahoops.
