Killers of the Flower Moon and Emancipation

Taking history from time and rendering it tactile and sharable involves making choices. From medium and franking, to must be left on the cutting room floor. I do not know if there can ever be perfect translations as rarely are their good and bad choices. But by looking at the final produced, not as a fully formed work, but the result of choices and their effects, I believe we better understanding the translated work and perhaps, history.

I recently finished one such translation: Killers of the Flower Moon. Martin Scorsese and his team, both behind the camera and in-front, perform their craft to a high standard, it is tempting to see the film as a product of singular vision. Tempting but inaccurate. Decades of auteur theory being the dominant strain of cinephile discourse and the SAG-AFTRA strike, has elevated Martin Scorsese to be the person associated with the film. He is the director, a major force behind the film, but to reduce Flower Moon to Scorsese’s picture would be to minimise many, chiefly those behind the camera: co-writer Eric Roth; editor and frequent Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker; the late musician Robbie Robertson; cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto; camera operators; consultants; language experts; owl handlers. Between them a dozen Academy Awards. I mention this not to state an obvious fact about filmmaking, but to push back on the narrative that this is solely Scorsese’s film, a reduction that has become the backbone of many a bad faith reading of the film. I mention this also to explain why, in this discussion of choices, I will mention not Scorsese as the author but treat the film as a text to be read, a good place to start is the beginning.

Killers of the Flower Moon opens with Osage elders mourning the coming assimilation of their descendants into White America, but the first character we follow is Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart. You can read this juxtaposition as a framing choice: the Osage tribe as background while the spotlight follows the White American characters. This forms the backbone of much criticism, linking the choice of framing as why Martin Scorsese, a white American, should not have been the person to tell this tale.

A good version of this criticism circulated at the film’s premier. Shared by The Hollywood Reporter, Osage language consultant Christopher Cote had this to say:

I was nervous about the release of the film. Now that I’ve seen it, I have strong opinions. As an Osage, I really wanted this to be from the perspective of Mollie and what her family experienced, but I think it would take an Osage to do that. Martin Scorsese, not being an Osage, I think he did a great job representing our people. But this story is being told, almost from the perspective of Ernest Burkhart, and then kind of give him this conscience and they kind of depict that there’s love. But when somebody conspires to murder your entire family, that’s not love. That’s not love. That’s just beyond abuse. And I think in the end, the question that you can be left with if how long will you be complacent with racism? How long will you go along with something and not say something, not speak up? How long will you be complacent? And I think that’s because this film was not made for an Osage audience. It was made for everybody not Osage. For those that have been disenfranchised, they can relate. But for other countries that have their acts and their histories of oppression, this is an opportunity for them to ask themselves this question of morality. And so that is how I feel.¹

I find his comments fair, and like that they have formed part of the film’s wider discourse. It’s a shame that many have taken this mild pushback as a personal attack on their appreciation of the film. At the same time, I have a different reading though it doesn’t stray far from his. Finishing the film, I was positive. I haven’t seen much of his back catalogue, but amongst late Scorsese, I think it’s his best. Yet, I had Cote’s words, echoed by the friend I saw Flower Moon with, at the back of my mind. The film did spend considerable time on the supposed antagonists of the tale, was this the implicit bias born of creators who are removed from the tragedy? My initial thoughts were broadly that it serves a purpose, but it took watching another film to properly articulate them

Buried in the aftermath of its star actor slapping the host on stage at the Academy Awards, Emancipation (2022) released with little fanfare. A free evening and a soon to expire Apple TV+ subscription prompted me to finally get to it. The film is fine, I didn’t miss much, but I found it a much more interesting film in light of the Killers of the Flower Moon discourse.

At the surface level both are about American crimes, performed at the systemic level, being documented on film: The enslavements of African Americans and The Native American Genocide. While Emancipation follows Peter–the protagonist–exclusively, Flower Moon explores the lives and machinations of its villains. For one, despite being named, I had no idea what the man responsible for breaking up Peter’s family looked like until he was killed right at the end of the movie whereas Flower Moon shows one of the many murderers bonding with the person he was paid to kill, getting drunk, before eventually botching the hit: making it look like a crime rather than suicide. Whether this is a good choice or not, to me is beside the point, instead I want to ask what the effect of these different choices are?

For one, Emancipation never feels large, it’s almost personal the crime, partly because you only focus on Peter and a smaller extent on his family. The slave-owners become almost like evil phantoms literally chasing Peter all the way to the Union army. Despite a state spanning journey and in the background of the American Civil War, it never achieves a sense of scale, nor does it reach a sense of tangibility. Part of the last point is the desaturated colour correction (another choice), and its basis in a famous photo rather than a specific narrative. Nonetheless, Emancipation, with its brutal depiction of life under slavery comes across as a tragedy, a terrible story of how things were. In Flower moon, we are told by name everyone involved in every murder the movie highlights. Also, in part because of its longer time span, another choice, we see the intention behind the crime; the conspiracy. In other words, I come out of Emancipation, aware of the tragedy and evil of slavery whereas Flower Moon, my eyes are pointed towards the miscarriage of justice, of a crime gotten away with. Ultimately, I think Cote is right that Killers is not a film for the Osage. I cannot say with any certainty, but one that fits that description would’ve been more personal and of a smaller scope. Instead, what we have and what I’m glad was made is a film about a uniquely American crime. It is this, I feel that animates the film rather than a preference for White America. I’m not Osage and so that might be all I can get from history. Whether that’s a good choice or not is up to you.