It’s the eve of the 1920s, on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma, which became very wealthy after oil began to gush out of the native lands. Here – hoping to fall under the wing of Uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro)Ernest Burkhart, a highly influential man and local sheriff’s deputy, World War I veteran, arrives (Leonardo DiCaprio). Shortly after, on Hale’s advice, the man marries Molly Kyle, the girl he likes. (Lily Gladstone)), belonging to one of the wealthiest families of the Osage people. After some time, Molly’s sisters begin to die one after another, along with other local residents. However, none of these deaths are the subject of a police investigation.
Nature is so pure that people welcome a three-and-a-half-hour movie about systemic genocide with open arms, as if they still had faith in humanity after a three-hour movie about the creator of the atomic bomb. In 2019, in pre-Covid times, when Martin Scorsese’s previous film “The Irishman” was released on Netflix, an image was released with instructions to turn a three-and-a-half-hour gangster drama into a miniseries. merrily scrolling through social networks; before that, the tape had only been shown in limited numbers (major cinema chains did not have a sufficient “window” stream before release on the platform), and the director himself was actively criticized for comparing Marvel Studios to the film. interesting projects.
Everything will be different in 2023. Whining about the running time of “Killers of the Flower Moon” seems like bad form; Theaters that decided to show the film on intermission were slapped, and Apple teamed up with Paramount to give the film a decent release (including IMAX) before it was released online. Things are pretty interesting with the latter, too: The company decided to monetize “The Killers” from sales through digital stores first (i.e., the $200 million movie), rather than immediately dumping it on the Apple TV+ streaming subscription. $154 million in theaters, zero chance of a release). Pretty much everyone is sick of Marvel projects now — except Joe Russo, director of the latest “Avengers,” is arguing (and looking pretty pathetic) with his grandfather, who is also a TikTok star, with the help of his daughter Francesca.
To be fair, “Killers of the Flower Moon” really does seem like a breeze; This may not apply to the restrained “Irish”, who has not made a very successful experiment in reducing the computerized aging of people of retirement age in the frame. . Here it is somehow stupid even to talk about the huge cast, headed by Scorsese favorites DiCaprio and De Niro, who, of course, give a completely prohibitive level of acting (one portrays an absolute scumbag, but stupid, and the second an absolute scumbag). , but incredibly smart). It is not foolish to talk about Gladstone except that he was superior to both of them. It was incredible that the actress was desperately looking for work and was already enrolling in data analysis courses when she received a letter from the producers confirming the role, and now she has a chance to win an Oscar. Just as the wealth of the Osage people flows into Hale’s pocket as if caught in a damn funnel, Scorsese’s entire film is subjected to Gladstone’s irresistible pull, despite DiCaprio getting much more pure screen time.
“The Assassins”, which became Scorsese’s second screenplay work in 28 years (he last worked on the text “Silence” himself, and before that “Casino”), if you do not count the series “Vinyl”, looks like a breeze. And this is taking into account the fact that in the end there is almost no air left in them. It’s a monstrously oppressive picture, either ringing like hell (a remarkable piece of work with the slide guitar of Scorsese’s eternal collaborator on the music, Robbie Robertson, who died a few months after its premiere in Cannes; the film is dedicated to his memory) or beating deafeningly on the hellish drum . Beating with a regular characteristic of putting nails in the coffin, that’s what American society (and the so-called legal system) turned out to be for the country’s indigenous population. “The Killers of the Flower Moon” is not just a movie about opportunist scum who confuse oil with blood and capitalism with colonialism. It’s not a movie about exactly how the civilized world treats people facing genocide (just look at the news feed in that sense). How much about what conclusions do you draw from this? Spoiler: none. All he does is hastily sweep the trash under the rug so he can forget about it forever.