Written by Grant Lefelar
In the early 1960s, Adolf Eichmann, a former officer in the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) and a leading organizer of the Holocaust, was captured after nearly a decade-and-a-half on the run and put on trial in Israel. Eichmann’s defense at his trial was reminiscent of the ones used by his ex-colleagues during the post-war Nuremberg Trials. His strategy was not to deny involvement in the systematic murder of an estimated six million but to claim he was simply following his superior’s orders and had no choice but to collaborate with Hitler’s totalitarian regime. Eichmann, as expected, was found guilty and met his demise at the gallows of Ayalon Prison in 1962. However, Eichmann’s defense proved intriguing to many scholars and provoked a debate on whether normal individuals could do just as Eichmann claimed: follow orders, even if they were committing the unspeakable. One witness at Eichmann’s trial, German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, researched that question. In her report of the trial, Arendt coined the term the “banality of evil” to describe the ability of ordinary, level-headed, and mild-mannered people to commit heinous acts not out of malice or depravity but for the advancement of their careers and livelihoods. Arendt’s concept became immediately popular among academics and the public, who adopted the idea en masse as a convenient explanation for humanity’s worst moments.
Director Martin Scorsese’s latest thriller Killers of the Flower Moon is not about the “banality of evil.” If anything, the film is a wholehearted rejection of Arendt’s hypothesis. Throughout Killers, evil is not a hidden force brought to the surface out of personal necessity but a lurking presence in every home, building, street, field, and automobile—plotting, watching, and waiting patiently to strike in an instant. The savage and psychotic brutality seen in the film is permanently outward, manifesting itself into monstrous deeds committed by seemingly normal people. However, as Scorsese and co-screenwriter Eric Roth show, there is nothing normal about their hunger for land, money, and power. “Can you find the wolves in this picture?” asks Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in one scene. Yes, the wolves are always in frame, ready to strike, maim, and kill.
Based on the true story documented in journalist David Grann’s book of the same title, Killers of the Flower Moon is a dramatization of Oklahoma’s Osage murders where an estimated 60 people were killed from 1918 to the late 1920s. At Killers’ outset, World War One veteran Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns to Osage County, Oklahoma to find employment with his uncle, the powerful and charismatic cattle rancher William King Hale (Robert De Niro). In the film’s small world of dusty, rural Oklahoma, stereotypical race relations are reversed as members of the native Osage Nation gain an abundance of material wealth through oil found on their reservation, land once thought to be barren and worthless. Osage natives adopt the culture of the white-dominated bourgeoisie: golf, expensive automobiles, beautiful homes, and the finest clothes and jewelry. Meanwhile, the area’s white populace serves the Osage as their servants, drivers, and oil field workers. The unique socio-racial situation of Osage County leads to a wave a white resentment against the Osage, culminating in the formation of a wicked conspiracy led by Hale to marry whites into Osage families, slowly eliminate Osage natives one by one, and receive headrights to the oil rich land from the deceased. As part of his plot, Hale persuades Burkhart to wed Mollie Cobb (Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman, entwining Burkhart in Hale’s scheme. However, the Osage, who notice the growing path of death and destruction left around their community, refuse to go quietly, leading to outside intervention in the murders’ investigation and the conspiracy’s dramatic unraveling.
Frequent Scorsese collaborator Robert De Niro delivers a stunning portrayal of Hale. Hale, who fittingly prefers Osage County residents to refer to him as “King,” exercises an authoritarian level of control over all aspects of the conspiracy. De Niro’s performance convincingly portrays Hale as a two-faced man, building an impenetrable facade of kindness towards the Osage people that masks his ferocious greed and envy of the area’s natives. As Hale mingles among the Osage community, speaking their language and respecting their customs, he watches over the Osage like a vulture, taking note of whom he can next condemn to death, ready to strip the dead of all their value. Hale’s evil does not emerge out of his need to preserve his position in the community but through his never-ceasing acquisitiveness and a supremacist desire to restore the racial status quo. De Niro’s ability to show Hale’s outside affability in one shot and core rottenness in the next makes the character all the more frightening.
Leonardo DiCaprio, another Scorsese regular, depicts Hale’s nephew, Ernst Burkhart. Burkhart enters the picture in the vein of a potentially moralistic antagonist to Hale, one who will find the light and end the reign of terror against the Osage. Yet, Burkhart’s soul is quickly swept up in Hale’s darkness, leading him deeper and deeper into his uncle’s plot as he becomes increasingly complicit in committing abominable acts against his family’s Osage members. Despite his wickedness, DiCaprio’s brilliant performance successfully allows the complexity of his character to be simultaneously present. While Burkhart cares for his already sickly wife, he unquestionably poisons her through her medication and lies to her when confronted. While he expresses love for other members of his family, he’s privy to his uncle’s orders to kill his sisters-in-law. Burkhart’s internal conflict on whether to defend his wife or follow his uncle’s lead creates Killers most pronounced drama, leading to its exciting conclusion. However, Burkhart never comes to terms with what he has helped unleash upon his community. Viewers may be motivated to sympathize with him at points, but Scorsese and DiCaprio make it clear through clever characterization that he is not worthy of anyone’s pity.
Unlike Scorsese’s previous hits, Killers’ violence is unromantic, coldblooded, and jarring as innocents are unceremoniously gunned down due to their heritage and wealth. There are no Tarantino-like violence fests or mobster shootouts present in Killers. Instead, Scorsese intends for viewers to reflect on the violence they are witnessing rather than revel in it. Through these scenes, Scorsese makes the film’s intent clear: it is an exploration of the horrific realities of genocidal violence and the justifications individuals tell themselves to make it happen. The killings are not carried out by everyday people looking to simply advance the trajectory of their lives, but by devilish creatures motivated by similarly wicked ideas and ideology.
Killers’ exploration of evil in the context of the American frontier some 100 years ago has garnered negative reactions from those who view the film as Scorcese’s overcompensating act of self-flagellation for the past crimes of white men against Native Americans. National Review’s Armond White called the film a “guilt saga,” opining, “All that Killers of the Flower Moon has going for it is the woke idea that America’s white men are spiritually sick…with the added Millennial gloss of racial blame along the lines of Biden-era white self-revulsion.”
To relegate Killers to the status of a “woke” treatise on American history is missing Scorsese’s point entirely. Killers condemns the murders in the strongest terms as an act of socially sanctioned genocide done by men to satisfy their hunger for land and money. Yet, Scorsese never condemns his audience for the grave sins seen in the film, keeping the action of man’s crimes against the Osage in the past. Scorsese also refuses to denounce the American spirit. Nearly all of Scorsese’s America-set films deal with the harsh, violent, and non-glossy realities that are a part of the American experience, as seen in cinematic greats such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and more. In exploring these stories, Scorsese never loses faith in American ideas but expresses disappointment in previous failure to live up to them. Killers, while undeniably one of his scornful features, is no different and should be viewed as a documentation of America’s past, not a reflection on its present.
Killers of the Flower Moon’s runtime of just under three-and-a-half hours allows the film’s story about man’s ability to inflict harm upon his neighbor room to breathe with an always expanding tension, partially driven by the late, great Robbie Robertson’s brooding score. Those entering Killers of the Flower Moon expecting a scathing diatribe against America will not receive one. Instead, Killers is a mournful examination of violence and the evil that fosters it, a new kind of Scorsese masterpiece that adds a new, somber dimension to his incredible body of work.