2023-10-21 10:26:10
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. Nelle sale
Like a splendid painting placed slightly askew. Obliquely 1) because Killers Of The Flower Moon tells a shocking yet true story, geographically distant but very profound. With the thirst for power, the obsession with money, the dark side of human nature, the world that is changing, the (betrayed) sense of roots. 2) Why Martin Scorsese chooses a type of direction that is slightly out of time, out of rhythm, against the trend, and a genre, the existential western, that is slightly obsolete. 3) Because it has an open and perhaps unfair ending despite the real events that inspired the film.
Using the adverb slightly several times for a film that lasts 206 minutes, that is, over three and a half hours, may seem specious. Instead, the story in its elephantine pace always remains enjoyable, exciting and incisive like a good wilderness thriller. The protagonists are the Osage, a tribe of Native Americans from Oklahoma who in the 1920s subverted the law of the prairie and the order imposed by force by the whites. Killers Of The Flower Moon actually talks about us, about Change and the moral fall that often accompanies it. The atmosphere is reminiscent of There Will Be Blood, while the elements are classic western ones: Indians, cowboys, sheriffs, trains and horses, bank robbers, a community to be saved.
The story, then. Oil is found on the Osage reservation and the social picture is turned upside down. The red Indians, holders of government concessions, become rich, richer than the whites. They can afford drivers and servants, they have access to luxury, they have beautiful houses, livestock, ranches. All it takes to unleash the greed and envy of pale faces. In this context, the First World War veteran Ernest arrives, a naive young man in search of a future. He is welcomed into that distant El Dorado by his uncle William Hale, known as King (Robert De Niro), who has created an outpost among the Osage, pretending to assist the tribe and instead hatching a diabolical plan. Ernest will be his lackey, he will creep into the community, and others will follow him, to marry an heiress, the quiet Mollie, who with her mother and sisters holds the richest concession.
Women will be gradually eliminated, every murder will be announced by an owl, husbands will have black gold and the natural order of things will be re-established. The criminal plan proceeds: the wedding between Ernest and Mollie is celebrated according to Osage customs, while her mother and sisters, who suffers from diabetes and is therefore delicate, are killed without mercy. A stone blocks the intrigue: the weak Ernest falls a little in love with his wife and hesitates, even if he doesn’t have the strength to oppose the plots of his terrible uncle. At this point, the film takes a Shakespearean, pure crime turn, in line with Scorsese’s cinema enriched by the dissonances of Ari Aster, cited by the director himself. Making the pendulum between Goodfellas and The Irishman, the drama is enriched with supporting figures who, in the play of contrasts, help to define the main profiles (and here the performances of Jesse Plemons and Brendan Fraser stand out).
Scorsese refers to the book The Red Earth Assassins by David Grann, recounting the attempted massacre of a community and the end of a world built like a hive on clans, families, gangs, the mirror of a collective disorientation. The contrast between the passive pride of the natives and the ferocity of the white invaders is the most incisive element of the film, diluted in a swamp of thoughts and feelings tending towards the murky. In the end, one wonders who the savages, the barbarians, the bad guys really are. The excellent cast: DiCaprio grappling with the most difficult role, yet it is his Ernest without quality, so oscillating and contradictory, who holds up the three and a half hours of the black ballad. De Niro is the usual champion, even if he sometimes exceeds in virtuosity. The best of the lot Lily Gladstone, innocent victim and grieving madonna with a look crossed by tragedy.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON di Martin Scorsese
(USA, 2023, duration 206′, Leone Film Group with Rai Cinema, 01 Distribution)
con Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Lily Gladstone, Brendan Fraser, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers
Rating: *** out of 5
In the rooms
October 21, 2023 | 06:45
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