Killers of the Flower Moon

Yesterday's matinee was this movie, based on the book by David Grann. It dramatizes the ways white people exploited the Osage Indians in Oklahoma when they struck it rich in the early 20th century oil boom – such as declaring them incompetent to handle their own financial affairs and forcing them to apply to a guardian for funds, convincing them that if their brand new car ran out of gas they should just buy another one, intermarrying with them in order to jigger themselves into ownership of a share of the oil money, and (to top all) arranging a series of convenient deaths knowing that the corrupt local authorities wouldn't investigate.

At the center of the story is a World War I veteran named Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) who rolls into town under the auspices of his uncle Bill (Robert de Niro) – and already I feel a digression coming on. It's just interesting that when you see the two actors' names in all caps, that "DE NIRO" really is all caps while "DiCAPRIO" has a lowercase i in it. What's with that? Another thing these actors have in common, both in general and specifically in this movie, is their ability to cover a wide and deeply nuanced range in their performance while, at the same time, having a resting scowl face; more the pity, when you remember how good-looking they both were in their prime. Now back to the picture.

So, Ernest rocks up and starts taking orders from Uncle Bill, who sees the nouveau-riches Osage as ripe for the plucking. Ernest sets his cap for a lovely, softspoken woman named Mollie and pretty soon they're married. Meanwhile, members of her family are dropping like flies – and Ernest goes from being vaguely aware of how convenient this is for his uncle's ambition to bring shares of those Osage land rights under his control, to being actively involved in the conspiracy. Before you know it, he's adding a little something to Mollie's insulin shots, making her so miserably sick that she becomes powerless to investigate what's happening to her community. While she gets sicker and sicker, a friend of the tribe goes to Washington to appeal for help and gets stabbed to death in the street, while her private eye gets beaten up and run out of town.

The murders get increasingly brazen and diabolical, and you're starting to wonder when someone is going to make an attempt on Ernest and his family when, long story short, he turns state evidence. Then flip-flops on this decision a couple of times. Despite a valiant bid to earn the audience's sympathy (and the tears on my face, at one point, show how close it came), he finally doesn't quite get there, and the story wraps up as a bittersweet (and none too sweet, either) reminder that there isn't much justice in the world, and for certain types of people, less justice than one generally sees going around.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Boom. A house down the street (occupied by a couple in Mollie's family) goes up in a dynamite bomb. And Ernest is in shock about it, despite the fact that he planned it and ordered it. (2) Ernest's grief upon hearing that his daughter has died. (3) The reasonableness of Uncle Bill when, through the bars of his jail cell, Ernest tells him he's going to testify against him. There are lots of runners up, but an Honorable Mention has to go to the epilogue in which, as an alternative to flashing a long series of title cards at us, director Martin Scorsese presents a sketch of what happened to everybody after the end of the story in the form of a radio drama recorded before a live audience, with an onstage orchestra and live Foley effects. Scorsese himself comes onscreen for the last bit, the one that twists the dagger in the wound.

Besides he of DE and him of Di, the cast also features Jesse Plemons (who played a Nazi in Jungle Cruise) as the lead FBI agent on the case, John Lithgow as a prosecutor, Brendan Fraser as a blowhard defense attorney (he's never been less attractive), Barry Corbin (of Northern Exposure) as the undertaker, singer Jason Isbell as the husband in the couple that gets blown up, and other familiar faces. Most importantly, because her performance equals those of de Niro and DiCaprio in its expressive range and power, it stars Lily Gladstone as Mollie, a mostly soft-spoken woman whose even temper and subtle manner of expressing herself somehow doesn't contradict her strong magnetism or inhibit the extremes that her role demands of her – from a shriek of grief to a feverish delirium. And despite the quirky radio play and a present-day drum dance with full regalia that follows, it is her character who really ends the movie simply by walking out of the room.