I haven’t seen a discussion of this movie, yet. (Maybe i missed it?) I just saw it a couple days ago and was really impressed. We did take an intermission (and eat lunch in the middle of it) but it held my attention. The acting is great: we really believed the characters, even when they made unexpected choices. (That’s not quite the right word…) The cinematography is gorgeous. Some of the artistic choices were also unexpected, but we thought they worked.
One thing that i wondered about is how true it is. I’m not used to J Edgar Hoover and Calvin Coolidge being the good guys. Heck, maybe even the insurance company, in a small way.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I read the book a while ago. As I remember, Hoover was more looking to expand his empire than to stand up for Native American rights, but the locals whites were pretty horrorific.
Side note: I sent a contribution to the group funding the renovation of the Tall Chief Theater in the town a few months ago, and yesterday I received a nice handwritten note with a photo of the theater on the note card thanking me. Unexpected and a nice surprise.
We liked it though we did split it up over two days of watching. I didn’t really understand Leonardo DiCaprio’s character- he just seemed both monumentally stupid and conflicted in a way that didn’t make that much sense, considering his actions. I also wish they had used some more time to explain how the money situation worked. After the first half, I had to look up how the system was set up to understand why Mollie had to ask for money for medical treatment, etc.
Over all, the movie was good enough, I’d watch it (in short bursts) again and Lily Gladstone was compelling. She has a wonderful, expressive face that you can’t look away from.
If they didn’t explain the money situation very well then it would be difficult to really understand what was going on. I’ve read the book, so I would probably be able to fill in the blanks while watching the movie. But if you haven’t read the book, then it sounds like the movie – for all its length – didn’t go into enough (or the right kind of) detail. When I read books like the one this movie was based on, I often think how it would make a good movie, but an even better series. Because even a very long movie has to leave out so much.
I just finished The Boys in the Boat, and I’ve heard they’re going to make a movie. The detail in the book was what made it compelling to read for me. They’ll probably have to leave a lot out if they make it into a movie.
It’s already in theaters. And yes, they had to curtail some of the story in order for it to be interesting (and under 12 hours). I thought it told the story very well, though, and stayed true to the book for the most part.
As for “Killers”, I felt it was in need of some serious editing. Way too long, and way too much ad-libbing by the stars. I also read the book. It’s an important piece of history, but I thought the movie presentation could have been better.
I don’t want to derail this thread, but I’ll say that I probably didn’t say that very well. I don’t want to introduce spoilers; so when you see the film, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
I liked the movie (the one this thread is about) and especially the period soundtrack.
FWIW, I’ve never read the book (I can’t read anymore), but I didn’t have any difficult following the money situation. Possibly because I already knew about it from a combination of Wikipedia and, for those unawares, 1959’s The FBI Story, which features the Osage murders, among other historical vignettes.
Anyway, though the movie was long, it didn’t feel long to me, though that may be in part because, like many here, I watched it at home and could pause here and there as needed. By contrast, I thought The Irishman was terrible (and I’m not a huge fan of Silence either). But Killers of the Flower Moon? Solid. Would watch again (actually, did watch again–that’s right, I watched it twice). And the hard cut to the radio program as a way to end it was brilliant. A nice epilogue to let people know how things turned out, without having to draw the movie out into a miniseries.
And I’m sad that my friend bought it, rather than me, because i would like to watch it again.
I had no prior info on how the money was handled, but i felt it was introduced pretty well, without a lot of narrative, and that i had a good-enough idea to understand what was going on.
I learned about the money from reading reviews and other articles in advance of seeing the movie, like this one (gift link to New York Times article that provides the back story, like where the money came from and why she had to ask for her own money).
Thanks. Reading that article, I got the gist of what was going on with guardians. You just need to guess that Indians were being screwed by being assumed incompetent to manager their affairs, so a lot of white guys got to dole out the Indians’ own money. If that’s a natural assumption for you to make, then I think there is enough in the movie to understand what’s going on.
Also, it answers my question in the OP. Yes, the story is mostly factual, even the part about the (precursor of the) FBI being the good guys. (Obviously, the story has been simplified to make a narrative that fits a movie.)
I did. Yes, he’s stupid. He’s dumb and greedy but loves his wife. He’s easily swayed by whoever has most recently talked to him. And reading the NYT article, I think that was probably accurate – at least that he was both greedy and stupid.
I have not read the source book but my understanding is that a big chunk of it is about the founding of the FBI, as this case was one of the first ones it investigated. That bit was left out of the film.
Very true, I guess I had difficulty with the level of his stupidity, and cruelty, if he also had feelings for his wife. I mean not just going along with the insulin thing (which no one outright told him would kill Mollie but … how could he not know?) but mostly watching her grief as her family was destroyed.
It’s weird to see how many people thought this movie was so good. The book was around 300 pages, not very long at all, and Scorcese dragged it out and beat the shit out of every inch of it. It was loooooooong and painful to watch.
I wonder how many took an intermission? The second half really moved along, and was gripping. I enjoyed the first half, too, but might have been itchy during the second if I’d been sitting in the dark the whole time.
I was not impressed with this movie. Three and a half hours! To accomplish what? I like Lily Gladstone, but to be honest, she had more agency as Hokti in a half hour episode of Rez Dogs. Just a glorified “white saviour” story again, with the FBI as the white saviours this time. You can do better, Marty.
Title — Scorsese: awful movie but a great historical story, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
My wife and I just watched Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), set in 1920s Oklahoma, in Osage County, in the north-central part of the state. The story is very similar to the 1921 Tulsa Massacre which was about African Americans who’d discovered oil on their lands (and which I’d known something about). This was about Osage Indians who’d discovered oil on their lands (and which I knew very little about before). And it happened at around the same time as Tulsa — early 1920s. It’s a similar story about greed and violence.
It was a fairly factual movie set in Fairfax OK, only about 50 miles NW of Tulsa as the mosquito flies. The movie was 3½ hours long and it moved So. Very. Slowly. Excruciatingly so. I’m surprised I stayed awake but having coffee earlier sure helped. In the end the story ties up nicely, but Martin Scorsese took 3½ hours and does not tell the story very well.
Afterwards we watched some YouTube videos on this Osage Indians story to learn some more. There are many interesting facts to this story that Scorsese could have incorporated but did not. In the end the movie is fairly factual, a story of greed, but it is horribly told.
IANAE but I didn’t think I’d ever associate Martin Scorsese with an awful movie.