Killers of the Flower Moon
Verdict: Masterful storytelling.
Enemy
Verdict: Too fancy by half.
If you had ever watched Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon on a transatlantic flight, they would have kept you occupied practically the entire way from London to New York.
For those of us who value concise storytelling, it’s a little disheartening that the two leading Best Picture contenders at next year’s Academy Awards (at least according to the bookmakers) will together clock in at around six-and-a-half hours.
In terms of length, Scorsese’s superb film starring Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio is the stronger of the pair at 206 minutes. Still, the story is powerful and implies an even larger one: what is sometimes called America’s original sin—the terrible treatment of its indigenous people. Thus, the veteran director gives his film (which is being released in short before airing on Apple TV+) a commensurate length.
It was inspired by the book, David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction bestseller Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In fact, Scorsese and his co-writer Eric Roth largely dismantle the beginnings of J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, focusing instead on the ongoing attempts by a cabal of white businessmen in Oklahoma to steal the wealth of the Osage tribe through murder from dozens of them.
The Osages became amazingly wealthy after the discovery of oil on their land in 1897. By the 1920s, when the film is set, they had become the richest people per capita on Earth, sending their children to expensive private schools and driving around in fancy chauffeured cars.
But we still see them being treated horribly. Considered unfit to spend their own money freely, they can only do so through white “guardians” who are complicit in the disgusting system of price gouging.
However, systematic theft is not enough. De Niro plays a cattle baron named Bill Hale, the self-proclaimed “King of the Osage Hills” who portrays himself as the tribe’s greatest protector and benefactor. He laments the fact that “most Osages don’t live past 50.”
But one of the reasons they don’t is because he kills them quietly, sometimes secretly (mostly with poison), sometimes with a bullet to the back of the head. Thus, if there is a white male in the family, his land can be inherited.
One of the main instruments of his dastardly plan is his sleazy, dim-witted nephew Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), whom Hale persuades to marry Molly (Lily Gladstone), the Osage heiress he rides around on.
I first saw the film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where its world premiere was greeted with great excitement, not least because De Niro and DiCaprio, two of Scorsese’s favorite actors, had never appeared on screen together before. No wonder they are both beautiful; the latter somehow works forward to suggest shared family characteristics with De Niro’s character.
But Gladstone steals the film from under their illustrious noses. She gives an excellent, award-worthy performance as Molly, who watches her mother and sisters die in various horrific circumstances before becoming mysteriously ill herself. In fact, on some fascinating level, Killers of the Flower Moon is simply a portrait of a marriage, because despite his murderous plans, despite being held captive by his amoral uncle, Ernest truly falls in love with Molly, and she’s into it.
This film is not a detective story, much less a “why do it” movie. It’s not really a thriller or a crime procedural, even if Jesse Plemons, as a smart and tenacious FBI agent, enters the fray two-thirds of the way through.
Although incredibly long, this is a masterful piece of storytelling from one of cinema’s greatest exponents, with a surprisingly audacious conclusion that, despite the tragic events depicted, will make you walk away with a smile.
Enemy is another drama set in the American Midwest, but in the future rather than the past. The year is 2065, and a young couple, Hen and Junior, played by Irish couple Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal but who are locals, live on a deserted farm.
Climate change around them has caused such havoc that the US government is promoting “extraterrestrial habitation”, sending people to live in space for several years.
For reasons that were never explained, Junior was chosen to participate in the program, but Hen was not. However, the mysterious Englishman (Aaron Pierre) sent to recruit him informs them that once Junior leaves, he will be replaced by an artificial intelligence “life form”, an exact copy.
Enemy is directed and co-written by Garth Davis, an Australian filmmaker whose 2016 film Lion I really enjoyed, but this tense sci-fi tale begins to flounder in its weirdness rather quickly. Ronan and Mescal are both terrifying and have truly amazing on-screen chemistry (not least in some pretty steamy sex scenes). But Pho is not really worthy of their talents.