By Max Bergman
Staff Writer
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is a new film by Martin Scorsese released on Oct. 27, 2023, becoming one of Scorsese’s best and most thought-provoking films. The film is especially moving as it is based on such a largely unknown tragedy known as the “Reign of Tears.” This tragedy took place in the 1920s in Fairfax, Oklahoma, in which an organized crime ring was formed to steal wealth of the local Native American population who had suddenly come upon immense wealth due to finding oil on their land a few decades prior.
The Osage community, or Wahzhazhe community, were originally located between the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys, but were displaced by American settlers during the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, where over 60,000 indigenous people were forcibly moved from their homelands to what is now present-day Oklahoma. The Osage, like many other native tribes, were settled on inhospitable land largely unsuitable for farming. This atrocity still haunts many Native American families today.
What the government did not know at the time was that the land where the Native Americans were relocated to sat on rich oil wells, a fact discovered in the late 19th century. The Osage eventually made a deal with the U.S. government in 1906; this deal granted Osage tribe members “head right,” or a share of the wealth from what was called the Osage Mineral Trust. This made the Osage people very wealthy and became the wealthiest community per capita in the world. Nonetheless, the government imposed a ward system on the Osage, under the premise that they could not be expected to handle their new-found wealth responsibly, whereas a white person would handle all their financial transactions even though the Osage still controlled their head rights.
What happened next would be one of the most traumatic events among the Osage tribe and is something many are still wrestling with today. Throughout the early 1920s in Fairfax, Oklahoma, what was then called, “Indian country,” 24 Osage people were killed over the span of five years (the current population Fairfax, Oklahoma is only 1,800 people). Witnesses and even investigators trying to solve the crimes would turn up dead under mysterious and not-so-mysterious circumstances. A few of the murders were solved by Tom White, a former Texas ranger and investigator at the newly formed Bureau of Investigation, which would eventually become the FBI. White did arrest two prominent figures in 1926 for the murder of five Osage tribal members and a conspiracy to murder many more. Even to this day, dozens of the murders remain unsolved and likely will remain that way because of missing evidence and over 100 years passing since.
This movie is not for the faint of heart, as the story deals with blatant and systematic racism, betrayal, and how ugly early American history truly was, showcasing the true and unmistakable hideousness of the American frontier in the early 1900s. This is not a movie about cowboys robbing a train in the Wild West, but a movie about the darkness and racism which America was unfortunately founded upon.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” was released with a 93% ranking from Rotten Tomatoes and 8.9 stars out of 10 from IMDB. With a 206 minute run time, just under three and a half hours, I definitely had to take a pee break, but I couldn’t because the movie was just too captivating. Scorsese, known for his violent depictions of history such as “Gangs of New York” (2002), and his enigmatic approach to villains, brings out all the stops with this film, using two of his largest contributors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, to create a truly grim depiction of the Wild West in the early 20th century.
However, without a doubt, the star of this film is Lilly Gladstone, a Native American actress from Montana, born of Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Perce heritage. She went from a relatively successful indie actress, starring in a few indie movies and tv shows since 2012, to a frontrunner in the talks for an Oscar in 2024 practically overnight. Her performance in this film is unparalleled; she speaks so fluently in both the native tongue and her American Oklahoman accent. She grounds this story, showing the fear of the Osage community through her performance alone, saying throughout the film, “I don’t feel safe in my own home.”
If there is one thing this film does whole-heartedly, it is exactly what Scorsese says at the opening of the movie: “We worked very closely with the Osage community and Osage leaders, and a cast and crew deeply committed to telling this powerful, historical story in the proper most authentic way.”
