Big Picture Big Sound

To consider a new film from Martin Scorsese has always been to consider every film that came before it. Each picture, as Scorsese tends to affectionately call them, seems slightly influenced by another entry in his filmography. You can sense the frenetic nature of "Mean Streets" bubbling beneath his 1967 debut, "Who's That Knocking at My Door"; "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Silence" are in brilliant conversation with one another for reasons both obvious and not; the ever-complicated protagonists at the center of most of his works wouldn't exist without the darkness that imbued "Taxi Driver"'s Travis Bickle.

That connection has never been more profound, more self-reflective than it is in this, perhaps the final stage of Scorsese's career. Now 80, one could argue that each of the last four films in Scorsese's oeuvre is more contemplative than the last, not just in narrative scope, but also about the man behind the camera himself. 2013's "The Wolf of Wall Street" is a furious, energetic portrait of self-aggrandizing Wall Street tycoons that doesn't amplify their hedonistic ways, instead dissecting just how nightmarish their contentment with amorality truly is. With 2016's "Silence," Scorsese made a thoughtful tale of faith that is itself a battle of wills -- questioning one's self, questioning the church, questioning authority. And 2019's "The Irishman," arguably the most on-paper "Scorsesian" project imaginable, was far from just another gangster epic. It's a story of violence, sure, but also one of great pain, of great regret. It's a rumination on loneliness, the twilight of life, and how those two dark states tend to intersect as we look into our past and wonder: Where and when did it all go wrong?

Then, of course, comes the long-gestating "Killers of the Flower Moon," Scorsese's adaptation of David Grann's remarkable non-fiction book, a film that (on-paper) could easily be told as "just another gangster epic." But rather than telling the story of how the FBI investigated the shocking, genocidal murders of the Osage people as a sort of procedural -- which would've made for a more direct adaptation of Grann's book -- Scorsese and his co-writer, Eric Roth, aptly turn their attentions to the reign of terror itself, those carrying it out, and those directly impacted by it. In particular, they've chosen to center the marriage of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), and how Ernest became intimately involved in the systematic killing of Osage people, many of them members of Mollie's own family.

Ernest, a World War I veteran, comes to Fairfax, Oklahoma in 1918 with the intention of working for his uncle, William "King" Hale (Robert De Niro), who posits himself as the King of the Osage, a God-like figure that the Osage people turn to when in need or crisis -- and he's always all too willing to oblige, though it's clear from the jump that his intentions aren't exactly pure. In exchange for finding work for his nephew, William wants Ernest to marry an Osage woman and subsequently assist in "taking care of" her relatives, one by one, so as to inherit the family's oil money for his own family. Enter Mollie, who knows Ernest wants her money, but is unaware of how far he is willing to go to get it.

The result is a methodical study of evil, an unsparing depiction of hatred, greed, blindness, and brutality. But it's just as much the story of a marriage, how it began and how trust was built, only for it to be torn down from the inside by the opportunistic husband who initiated it, and took advantage of his wife's trust. DiCaprio's Ernest is dim, making his devil-may-care menacing nature even darker, a means-to-an-end way of getting ahead in the world, no matter how much guilt he may experience. He carries out crimes at the behest of his uncle and brother Byron (Scott Shepherd) with a lethal combination of reckless abandon and timidity. No better is this rendered than when it's time for his wife to be on the receiving end of the Burkhart's villainy, a notion that initially finds Ernest at a loss for words, though the show his uncle is conducting must go on.

It would be unfair to the legacy of the people he aided in the disposal of to characterize Ernest as a puppet, but that doesn't make King Hale any less of a puppeteer. Hale is the true architect of this horrid game, with Ernest and a number of other white men in their community merely serving as minions, blindly obedient until they develop their own sort of hatred for those they're oppressing. De Niro plays Hale as a hand-shaker, a baby-kisser, the man determined to alleviate whatever gray clouds float above the people in "his" community, all while essentially being the cloud himself.

But it's Gladstone as Mollie who delivers the film's most revelatory turn, harboring pain and seeking revenge she's practically unable to seek for much of the film due to the fact that she spends it bedbound, ill due to crippling diabetes -- among other heinous, yet related factors. But Gladstone's acting between the lines -- with her eyes, with a wry grin, trembling in fear, wailing in agony, etc. -- vaults her into uncharted territory. It's simply some of the best, most fully-realized acting we've seen this year, perhaps in many years. She gives Mollie life, something the white men in her midst, including her own husband, are desperately trying to strip her of. Gladstone's performance is a monumental achievement, one that in and of itself is a triad of sorts: She's tasked with capturing someone who witnesses tragedy firsthand, then nearly becomes a tragedy herself, before ultimately surviving it, and dealing with the unthinkable aftermath.

Such a revelatory performance serves not only Gladstone -- who, back in May, told The Hollywood Reporter that she was considering stepping away from acting before Scorsese called -- but also "Killers of the Flower Moon"'s overall narrative. Initially, Scorsese and the film's co-writer Eric Roth centered their script on FBI agent Tom White, and how he led the investigation that uncovered the horrors the Osage faced, a similar narrative to that of Grann's book. But with the help of star Leonardo DiCaprio, who was originally slated to play White, Scorsese realized that they were telling the wrong story. Speaking to Time Magazine last month, the director noted that he, upon reflection, realized he "was making a movie about all the white guys...Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me."

You can feel that concern, but it's not debilitating. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is restrained, intentional in the perspective from which it depicts these crimes. Martin Scorsese is not an Osage, and though he's shifted the center of the story he's adapted away from the FBI and onto Mollie's marriage, he's hardly pretending to be capable of telling an authentic Osage story. What he is capable of, perhaps more than any filmmaker past or present, is portraying how those in power -- or those assuming power by way of their whiteness -- manage to prey on those beneath them in order to serve their own desires. Yet in "Killers of the Flower Moon," that portrayal comes off more like an acknowledgement, a recognition of how often suffering in America either goes unnoticed, or is directly aided and fostered by those in our purview.

Scorsese has talked a lot of late about mortality, about how much time he has left. "I'm old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there's no more time," he told Deadline in May. In his GQ profile of Scorsese, Zach Baron observed that Scorsese has been asking himself the same questions for years: "What will happen when I get old? What kind of work could I do? ... Would there be any more depth?"

"Killers of the Flower Moon" is likely not Scorsese's final film -- he's already said his next project is The Wager, another David Grann adaptation. But if it were, the very notion of Scorsese asking himself whether or not there would be any more depth to his later films would be laughable. It's no exaggeration to say that Killers is likely the deepest work of Scorsese's career, one in which he himself reckons with the ideas of his past, and indirectly turns a mirror toward his audience as if to beckon them to understand, or at least to listen.

Early on in "Killers of the Flower Moon," Ernest reads a book on Osage history -- as assigned by his uncle as a foray into the culture they'd upend -- and comes upon a passage that reads, "Move, said the great white father. There are so many wolves... Can you find the wolves in this picture?" For Ernest, the picture in question is of wolves terrorizing the Osage on their own land. For Scorsese, the picture is the same; only the wolves have changed shape. If you can't find them, he asks, look again. They're in plain sight, more recognizable than you think.