Killers of the Flower Moon

I finished watching this last night. It’s a project, too long to take in one sitting. Long as it was, I can’t say I was ever bored.

The acting was one of the reasons to stay absorbed. De Niro is amazing. I never got the Leonardo DiCaprio bug. Maybe it’s an age thing. The other lead, Lily Gladstone, is good enough. A host of lesser characters are also very well done.

The striking thing about the story is the complete overlap in the leading white characters in their professed regard for the Osage and their ruthless determination to strip them of their stakes in mineral rights. The hypocrisy, or cognitive dissonance, is incredible. Coincidentally, I’m finishing up “Eichmann In Jerusalem” right now, and there is a strong parallel in the attitude of the Nazis towards the Jews.

There is criticism that the film “centers” the perspective of white folks. I don’t get that. The leading white characters are all swindlers, thieves, and murderers, as director Martin Scorsese pointed out. Another complaint is that it failed to reckon with the role of the Federal government in oppression of Native Americans, though that would be a different movie. The racism that infuses local white society in the film is plain enough.

My only question is how they enabled so many actors, including DeNiro, to speak the Osage language so convincingly.