Indigenous Insight on 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

the time is uh finally here for my thoughts and my review on Martin scors Ci's killers of the flower [Music] moon to preface this I watched it last night and I watched it in a fairly crowded theater uh of about maybe 40 to 50 people and let's just say that for me personally I was holding back tears Buy in and when I got back into my car and the parking lot I just had to let it out and I just I I cried for a good 5 to 10 minutes um and I'll explain why here in a bit but first I kind of just want to get out of the way a lot of kind of the initial things that I think most mainstream reviewers are talking about and one that it it's three and a halfish hours but I would argue you that it doesn't drag unlike the Irishman did but it it it it continues to keep going and going and so it it isn't a chore to sit through it's actually you're able to sit through it and everything so that was fine everything else like craft wise meaning like the actual film making is amazing now the production design was really good they they really were able to mix the historias with the authenticity of like the Osage people how they dressed how they talked uh portraying some of the ceremonies and a lot of the cultural norms like it it was just a it was kind of like prey where like everything was just part of the world you didn't question it it was just there it was a part of every everyday life and the performances now of course mostly everybody's talking about janiro and DiCaprio but like that's kind of a give you know in everywhere else but Lily Gladstone really does hold the fort down this entire film of course in my trailer reviews I was glad to hear that in some of the earlier reviews of it right but it was nice to see it it was nice to see how lily really held it down now I will get to uh her representation later in the spoiler section all everything that I'm saying is spoiler-free so far but warning I I am going to go for spoilers into this because it matters to the rest of my thoughts on the review of this film but other notable native performances that I thought were great was Tonto Cardinal and she had one of a scene that just really hit me hard where I was tearing up too but she did a great job of course we've seen more of her in uh smoke signals and Dances with Wolves in the past but be the way she was I I really appreciated her character and then uh Cara Jade Meers she did an amazing job as well as an Anna uh Molly's sister she did an amazing job she was she was just she she was one of my favorite characters and then William below who who plays Henry and he he has some pretty intense scenes where he is uh his character mentions that he is a melancholic and you really feel that you know and his performance definitely reminded me of like what happened to a lot of men native men on reserv on the reservation off the reservation who who look to drinking for any type of Remedy right he he kind of I don't want to say he channeled that but his just the his performance and his character situation just reminded me of that and then finally my homie Tatanka means uh his character was a character that I I'm seen a lot of uh uh he it's the F the native FBI character and he is based on a real life person who was definitely a part of the oage investigation and it I don't know what his tribal affiliation was we just know that he was part native and Tatanka means really played his character really well he I thought his performance was pretty solid so overall like on a performance level everything was great uh DiCaprio and dairo like you can go watch any other reviews where they're talk comparing and talking about it but it's kind of a given that yeah they're going to be fine you know the other thing too that I thought was interest like I mentioned the production design but like it was the attention to detail and a lot of a lot of the cultural norms for the O people that were just presented as everyday things that it was part of the world and in the language was a part of that there's actually a really cool dynamics of bilingualism happening here where uh a lot of the Sage people they're just speaking their native language but then they alternate you know between English and then even a lot of the white people who are inter Maring or living with them they speak oage and William hail who dairo plays is pretty fluent in oage which kind of digs a little deeper into his Sinister minations right the other thing that I really thought was cool uh was Robbie Robertson's score he's really subtle with his score and it he he he kind of allowed himself to play around with different sounds and moods and everything but it definitely his score definitely made it feel you know scors sessi gangster is Good Fellows like but it didn't detract it wasn't too distracting and it was it was it wasn't like too noticeable and uh it just helped inform the film and I am just glad that Robbie Robertson's last big project was a native themed film uh I'm just I'm just happy that that's the case if you don't know who Robbie Robertson and he's a pretty influential uh musician in the rock and blues world and he is Mohawk um the documentary Rumble uh he's actually a pretty central figure in that documentary but he scored a few of scorsese's films actually now I'm getting into spoilers because everything everything here let me now that I'm getting into spoilers I CU I feel like I was putting on my film making my film making hat um but the things that I'm talking about now I feel like are a little bit more grounded with kind of the indigenous and Native perspective so there were a few scenes that really got to me and spoke to me on a very personal level and a few of them were were really nice and others that were just heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching the first one for me was I mean the opening scene was very interesting I I really thought that that was a good tone Setter how they bury the pipe They Mourn the pipe for a lot of those tribes and especially the OS the pipe is considered like a living being like a person and this pipe represented basically their old ways that they were mourning the fact that like uh we're we're no longer going back this is this is the death of something very reverent scene but very well directed obviously and it really set the tone and then we get like the the the the whole montage of the oil bursting we get Robbie Roberts and the score really kind of coming in there and it was it was a pretty good you know tone Setter for like where the oage were at that point the one scene that really kind of it was the first like tear jerking scene and it probably wasn't like this for non-native audiences but it hit me it was another like ancestor type scene very much like in reservation dog season 2 but it was with Lizzy Q who Tonto Cardinal plays Molly's mother she's dying and as she's dying she opens her eyes and the first thing she sees is some of her ancestors and I'm guessing the the two other people the the man and the woman that she saw I am guessing that that's her parents I don't know who the man is who greeted her and held his hand out I don't know that scene was just touching like it was it was something that I personally would like to see you know more of of that you know it was just it was touching it was sweet it was reverent it was it was quiet and then you cut back to the you cut back to Molly and her sisters and they're just crying that was a good scene I I I loved that scene it it it in the midst of all the Death that was happening that was like a little small refresher of some Bliss but the other scenes were I'll talk more about I guess the killings and the violence but there were a few that were pretty brutal I mean Henry's death was brutal Rita's death was yeah it it it doesn't pull back on the reality of the whole thing and then finally the ending and the ending is what did it for me and I'll talk more about the ending here in MBA I'm talking about the radio show the True Crime radio show thing and then we get scors cessi himself self coming in and talking about Molly and then the very last shot is of the powow that's happening at the end that overhead shot and it just coin out and like it the end I'm going to talk more about that here in a bit because it matters to the context of everything else but those are some scenes that really stuck out to me as an indigenous viewer that they were both harrowing and depressing as hell but like also just I mean the the the the very last scene in Lizzy Q's death were just there were there were some some blankets of comfort for me personally so now I want to get into talking about thematic elements and criticism I know there's a lot of criticism I have criticisms some oage people have had criticisms but I kind of want to address that and contextualize kind of the wise of why I think scorsi did what he did there's been a lot of CRI ISM and I agree with this criticism but I think the criticisms are different but the main criticism is that there isn't too much of the Osage perspective now this is coming from a lot of native viewers but actually non-native viewers as well surprisingly there's a lot of uh mainstream you know non-native reviewers out there who kind of wish that we saw more of the the oage perspective and like yeah I I agree I feel like we could have seen more of Molly's family her Dynamic I kind of wanted to see a little bit more into how the Osage people were reacting to these murders cuz there really was a broad sense of paranoia within the the community and for the tribe like they were freaking out you only get glimpses of it when like you see after Rita and her husband dies in the bombing uh a few OS people are packing up and just leaving right you we don't get that sense of parano paranoia throughout the community I wish we had saw that a little bit more the same goes for uh tatonka mean's character who he infiltrates you know the the the tribe in a way to really get their perspectives on the murders and maybe he like cuz he's an FB undercover FBI AG he's pulling another uh Jim Chi and thunder heart here here he he's infiltrating to be able to kind of get an idea and get close to the community and just kind of understand like you know what do the oage know what do they think is happening you know who who could be doing this what what are they feeling you know but this is kind of the more I read about it the more I've been seeing people's reactions and the ending is really telling me why scors cessi and Eli Roth chose this new Direction so if you watch my original teaser trailer reaction I played different clips from the can's film festival and soressi mentions this that they were originally going to do the whole thing from the FBI's perspective it was going to be John White who or Tom white who uh Jesse plumm plays the whole thing was going to be going in from the FBI only and taking down these guys and all that but one is that I mean this is a criticism I see from people who have even seen the film of the're like oh it's just another white savior movie it's definitely not a white savior movie but the original script was leading into that white saviorism territory where you know the the good old FBI comes in and solves the crime right and uh DiCaprio was going to originally play Tom White's character but they actively sought to kind of get away from that Nero even mentions that in and to can's Festival he's like we've seen this too much we've seen too many of these wh savior like stories but the other reason why I think they also chose to show this from ernest's perspective to kind of give some contextual stuff like Ernest is hardly in the book he's he's just there he's convicted right but what I thought why why the why the film chose to go from ernest's perspective and now this is going to go into I guess some media literacy stuff a lot of people confuse protagonists for the hero there's a huge difference in film or in any story you have a protagonist and sometimes yes your protagonist is the hero of the story you root for this person I'm thinking breaking bad at first yes he is our hero we start rooting for him but towards the end you kind of don't you don't you're not supposed to at least you know or plenty of other characters throughout film Nightcrawler American Psycho like these are characters that are pretty messed up in the head but we're seeing everything from their perspective and the filmmakers are kind of given an attempt to kind of have us see like where they're coming from and why and I guess for me it's like who better to show the banality and evil and white supremacy of this whole conspiracy and through their perspective then gessi because he does that good Fellas Mean Streets uh I mean Wolf of Wall Street like these people are are just morally reprehensible and just bad people right but we're seeing their perspective and scorsi doesn't he doesn't try like he does a little bit in in Wolf of Wall Street where they're a bit idolized I'm I'm kind of Defending scorsi here but it makes sense like scorsi has a history of showcasing the inner mations of evil white men and to me it makes sense that why he would choose this stance to show this because one one of the Consultants he mentions that he he has the same critiques that I have about you know having more of the OS perspective but he did say that this this film wasn't made for the oage as an oage I really wanted this to be from the perspective of M and what her family experienced I think it would take an oage to do that Martin Scorsese not being oage I think he did a great job representing our people but this story is being told this history is being told almost from from the perspective of Ernest burkart and they kind of give him this conscience and they kind of depict that there's love but when somebody conspires to murder your entire family uh that's not love that's not love that's that's just beyond that's just beyond abuse I think in the end the question that you can be left with is 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 O AG audience it was made for everybody not oage uh for those that have been disenfranchised they can relate but for other countries you know you know that have their acts and their histories of Oppression um this is an opportunity for them to ask themselves this question of morality and so that's that's how I feel this film was made for everyone else particularly Americans and this is why I feel the ending definitely helps us inform this that scorsi is putting a mirror up to America and its history because the ending I mean from from my film making copile um Fanboy was amazing like it just it was great but he presents the whole story like in this uh kind of like a true crime radio show like in the 1920s where people are reading off a dramatized thing of the whole thing and it's like it's really meta because the show is like this radio show it's like exaggerated and it's it's got music and it dramatizes and sensationalizes the whole mystery and the murders I mean the whole subse this whole ending sequence is what you would see in a pretty typical historical drama where you get a black card and you have like the photos of all these people and it says you know like the updates of what happened after the movie right but we get this really genius um you know radio show thing but he comes in and reads what happen happens about Molly and talking about how how she remarried divorced Ernest and at her funeral there was no talk of the murder like you get this you get this curb stomp of reality that like there was really no justice served with this story and that's kind of that's that's what he was trying to go home with when talking about the banality of all the evil the banality of their conversations like like uh Deniro's conversations with Ernest and other all these other white people in this community was on a similar vein of the violence and the murders she won't last most OES don't live past 50s with these women D with how o suffer from yness you have to make it the head rats come to you you see the violence and the murders didn't stretch too much into sensationalism when people die you literally don't expect it there's no Fanfare there's no music there's a gunshot pop literally the popping sound of a gun and the person dies and it's it's usually done in wi shots medium shots you don't get like a dramatic closeup or like any of that the violence and the death of these people mostly indigenous women was Bal it was grounded and it was it was just like almost like the way the way scorsi portrayed it it was like an everyday thing for these people just like the conversations like the the conversations that William hail has with Ernest you know about Henry like he talks about him like he's some sort of cow like a he's an asset he's not a human being and I think that's what scorsi was trying to do with this he didn't want to sensationalize it although marketing is going to try to but that's that's to get people and just to watch the damn thing because if if I if I understand like what scorsetti was trying to do it was to hold a mirror up to America and say this is how easy it is to be complicit in evil in white supremacy this is how everyone was involved because they show that like in real life it was everybody in the county it was the magistrates it was the police it was the it was everybody it was deep ly rooted you see it's it's it's shown in that scene in the trailer but he's like this story is I need you people to understand that this is a part of our history these people were complicit and by default a lot of people who don't speak out on you know racial and any type of prejudice and Justice are complicit as well and what was what really got to me was one that that ending like I know I knew the the outcomes of all these people's lives but that presentation just like it just for me I felt like sesi was like curb stomping me into the ground and it hit me emotionally but then the last shot right after that is the drum circle panning out to the PA and and the dancing and like it was a beautiful period in a long essay that let me reminded me that like yeah all of that happened to to the oage people but they are still here like despite all of that they're still there kind of like for me when I I remember more about the Navajo long walk I remember about Massacre cave over at Kenyon theay the the scorched Earth campaign against the Navajo people and then later on with the uranium mining we're still here yeah we have less than a million enrolled members or non-enrolled even still that identify as Navajo but like we're still here and that it was like a mixture of like Dread but hope but then another thing The Dread came back because I was in I was in this screening and the film ended and the credits are rolling with this this honor song that's playing I think it's an honor song and everyone just gets up and I'm like of course I don't expect them to stay but and all that but but like there were some comments I heard from people that really pissed me off and like I heard a girl up front she goes oh man can you imagine if that was a true story oh like it just and I I wish they would have put I wish scores would have kind of go put forth a little bit more that yes this was a true story and the other thing too was showcase the scope of how many people actually died because because of this Limited perspective we only see a handful of people who died but there were there were a lot more people who died and I wish they would have showcased that more in the film and then I heard some guy behind me he's like ah another anti-white white movie you know and I guess those comments like pissed me off the most was because you didn't pay attention this is what scorsi was trying to do he was holding up a mirror the ending he was trying to do that at the ending and that's what that's what got to me was like how how how else are people going to learn you know and this has reminded me what happened in a particular town in Germany and there was a concentration camp uh locally and the American Military came in liberated it but what was fascinating is that they forced all of the civilians to look at the conditions and the survivors and the corpses and all the just depraved that the Nazis were doing to those people they made the civilians go and look and basically tell them like this is what was happening this is what you know the this is what your the regime that you voted for and that you uh were perpet perpetuating and upholding this is what they were doing and therefore you yourself were complicit in all of this and like the Nazis uh the nnest and and his uncle were all just just the banality of it all was just harrowing the violence against these people was so just nonchalant to these people I think scors sayi tried to pay some respect to the victims by not sensationalizing the violence and sensationalizing the crimes making the violence just straight and blunt and this leads me to like Earnest as well you're not supposed to feel sorry for Earnest you're you're supposed to see that like he's a scumbag he was an and scores is trying to tell us that like yeah he's conflicted but he's still did all these things and did he love Molly I think a part of them did I think I think uh I think a part of them love the idea of her but if you truly love somebody you don't poison them or you don't like go out and like murder their family that's not love that's some sort of sick twisted it's justed up and so I guess that's my that's my take on the film this film wasn't meant to it wasn't for the OS people it was meant to honor them and respect you know how they have survived this Legacy of violence and death but in my opinion it's more for everyone else to check themselves and remind themselves that like am my complicit and in the oppression of other people by not you know by indulging it or By ignoring it I guarantee you a lot of people in O County the white people who yeah may not have been directly involved in the murders but they probably knew about it there was it's really the the film actually kind of shows through all of the white people's um conversations that there was just this underlying like unspoken sense of like yeah like we're getting in like there's a one of the characters who married a no Sage woman talks to nnest and he leans in him he goes yeah she's full blood you know and um goes into blood Quantum and I can go a whole rant about blood Quantum myself but yeah when I when I was in my car crying my eyes out like it was a mixture of just rage uh catharsis hopelessness it was like a mixture of it all I I just I had a hard time compartmentalizing those emotions I just had to let it out in my car I was just I was beside myself right but I had a little bit more time to think on it and if you want to see another indigenous perspective there's some reviews on um Vincent Schilling has a review uh there's another review on a tribee called geek but this this is just my opinion about it and I guess it's like for the three and a half hour runtime if you can't sit and watch you know for native people this might be hard to watch but I think this again this wasn't particularly made for native people it's a native themed project right if you can't sit for 3 and 1/2 hours of looking at the violence of white supremacy you're the type of people who needs to watch it that's just me this kind of goes into me you know to the also the idea of like you know a lot of people are like how come the oage didn't make this movie how come the oage nation didn't you know have someone like again this goes back to what I talked about in my teaser trailer uh if we did it would have been like a PBS style documentary and that has a very limited audience scors cessi is already having a hard enough time to get people to watch a three and a half hour movie but in my opinion like one this was a passion project for him but two for him I think this is an important story to tell and he wants people to watch it to be like this this is what we as humans are capable of doing and you need to check yourself and we need to teach this in our American history I've been seeing lots of comments in different areas about people Oklahomans who were never taught about this history or the Tulsa the Tulsa City massacre in their Oklahoma history we have to find out like people learned about the Tulsa City Massacre through the Watchman TV show on freaking HBO that's how people learned about it they didn't learn about it through a history book you know and these days like people try to get their history on Tik Tok which is good and bad in my opinion but like the accessibility of this information you know yeah like it it's like it's easier in some certain circles online but like for the broader audience like people across the world are going to learn more about this that's why again if you watch my my other video about like the industry and everything it's like the broader the accessibility the and like viewership the easier it is for people to watch this and intake it and get what scorsi is trying to get out to people so if the if there was an Osage filmmaker to do this that Osage filmmaker would have to be I don't think they would be oage they would have to be someone like Sterling Haro or Tao atiti or uh Sydney Freeland or Billy Luther or uh black cors low you know uh Erica tremble but guess what this is just my personal opinion and I have to ask around to other native filmmakers but if you look at the content and films that indigenous filmmakers are usually making it isn't period stuff it's contemporary looks into the lives of natives now and I think it's because of the the history of native representation in Period pieces I think that takes away from a lot of native filmmakers because they don't want to like participate in that in a way but at the same time it's like if you pressure these filmmakers to make these historical pieces it's like it's hard uh even me already like there's some native artists out there who who want to make their content and make their art but they automatic Ally feel pressured to be an activist in some sort of way you can argue that like we have to be and others are like no I just want to make my Arts I don't want to have to be burdened with like every single thing that I have to talk about has to go back to the activism right and I feel like a lot of native filmmakers they do that in their own way reservation dogs did a lot of that subtly you know like like with the boarding school episode right again bones of crows by Marie Colum is like one of those very few native run projects that go into the past and talking about something traumatic in the past like I thought about myself I'm like would I go out and make a Navajo Long Walk movie would I be you know like and it goes all the way to the purpose of film and media is it meant to be Escapist is it meant to be cathartic is it meant to inform and of course in my opinion especially with recent days of what's happening right now with Israel and Palestine you get certain content creators who are telling us to uh stay off the news for your own mental health right and it's it's just like what the probably the people in um o County did back then oh don't worry about the murders just you know don't worry about it you'll be fine you know like don't don't think too hard on it and then when you when you stop when you stop caring or when you stop questioning and interrogating a lot of the injustices that are happening you become complicit that was long- winded it was a rant I know but um that's what I have to say about it this was this felt like my take on hereditary the horror film perfectly directed film effective in its horror may or may not watch it again so I know it was heavy and I but this is the thing I recommend I recommend you watch it that's just me um and if you are native I know for a fact a lot of native people are going to watch it regardless because it's natives in film and natives love to watch other natives on film I hopefully Gladstone gets nominated for an Academy Award for this I really do she she just knocked it out of the park on this one that's it for now I am in the middle of doing my review for uh reservation dog season 3 there's something pretty exciting happening over on on indigenous talk follow Patrick on Instagram and YouTube here on indigenous talk I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Native Media Theory

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Id: FgN9qf5b1BA

Length: 34min 43sec (2083 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023