Martin Scorsese's killers of the flower moon
has finally arrived in theatres and there's a lot to break down in the legendary filmmaker's
latest film. Whether it's the shocking plot against the Osage by William Hale, the unravelling
of how that took place, the investigations of the FBI which lead to quite a weak form
of justice or the ending scene and epilogue. So I'm going to be breaking down the plot
and explaining the ending for killers of the flower moon, to help guys put together a much
greater picture of the overall story. This analysis
will contain spoilers, so if you do happen to be someone who hasn't seen the film yet,
then I would recommend watching this upload after you've seen it. Before I get into it
though, if you want to keep up to date on any of my upcoming
content for Martin Scorsese's killers of the flower moon, then don't forget to support
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your notifications. But without further a do, lets dive into Martin Scorsese's killers
of the flower moon explained. With Killers of the Flower Moon, director
Martin Scorsese now has another classic film on his extended filmography. We've seen gripping
crime stories and real events be translated to screen expectly by the filmmaker in the
past, but Killers of the Flower Moon combines both of these approaches to give us an oscar
calibre project. His new picture, which is based on
the nonfiction novel of the same name by David Grann, dives head first into one of the most
shocking real life stories of racial hatred, corruption and brutality in US history, detailing
the murders of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. Like the film eventually depicts, the story
has often been kept away from historical records, again touching on the horrible corruption
at play, and it truly explores who is to blame
for all of it. While we learn a lot of the facts surrounding what happened throughout
the course of the 3 hour 30 minute runtime, the ending
really does a good job of shinning a light on those responsible for the Osage murders
and the devastating implications for those involved. And before we get to that particular
ending, we have to rundown some of the shocking plot
points included and what happened in the buildup to it. So Killers of the Flower Moon, unlike the
source material, centers on Leonardo DiCaprio's Ernest Burkhart and Lily Gladstone's Mollie
Kyle, detailing an initial blossoming relationship that hides in the shaddow of Robert De Niro's
William Hale. We begin the movie with DiCaprio's Ernest, a former serviceman who returns from
duty to live with his uncle, William King Hale and brother Bryan, in Osage County, Oklahoma.
Hale gives his nephew a place to stay at and we learn quite quickly that Ernest doesn’t
have many skills of his own, with it metaphorically clear that he no guts, showcassing
that DiCaprio's character is both physically and mentally someone who Hale can manipulate
and control to get what he wants. In fact, Hale considers himself the King of the Osage
and has established himself as a well-trusted and loved white man in the Osage community.
It's Learnt at the beginning that there is and established racial hatred towards the
Native people within the US, and that the Osage Nation have a lot of wealth because
of their control of oil production on their land. But while
their people are guaranteed the profits for it, they aren't given the control, with many
of them having to have guardians that receive their own funds. These so called guardians
were white businessmen, and as we soon learn in
the film, they used positions or often marriages to legally steal the Osage land and royalties. Ernest
is another person that Hale wishes to get close to the Osage to force through this
process of stealing, and we quickly learn how he plans to do so. Ernest initially makes
his money by working as a local driver, and that
introduces him to Lily Gladstone's respectable Osage woman Mollie Kyle. Essentially, much
of the Osage have mysteriously died without any investigation, and if Ernest gets close
to and marries Mollie, when her family dies, Ernest
would inherit the bloodline's wealth. If Ernest were then to die himself, his next of kin,
William Hale, would then get that money. However, while Ernest does love his money, he also
genuinely falls in love with Mollie after meeting her. So the twisted thing about the
whole situation is that he still agrees to be involved in
the violence against Mollie's family while loving her, and that is due to a mix of his
own greed and his uncle's manipulation. Eventually, Mollie and Ernest do get married and have
three children, and this can only mean bad things for Mollie's family. On top of the
escalation with the murders of the Osage, Mollie herself deals with increading symptoms
of Diabetes, meaning that a lot of the time while this
betrayal unfolds, she is ill in bed while her husband susposedly looks after her. She
recieves insulin medication by the white doctors known
as the Shoun brothers, which is supposedly meant to help her symptoms, but she becomes
suspicious that anyone from outside her Osage community could be secretly working against
her. And this is especially true when you combine this
with the fact that members in her family are brutally being killed off. Those mentioned murders manipulated by Hale,
also involve him attempting to set up his conspirators to take the fall for them. Instead
of creating a sense of mystery around all of it,
Martin Scorsese makes the audience understand exactly what is happening from the outset.
So there's no hiding who the real culprits are or their motivations. Scorsese aims to
expose them and the systems that allowed this brutality
to thrive in America. On top of this, the typical depiction of the Osage in Hollywood
is one that is usually more savage, and Scorsese's film treats that with more authenticity, getting
to the heart of how this was a community that were taken advantage of. Hale's victims were
members of a community whose lives were stolen in the aim to steal their money. There
were 60 Osage people murdered in the events and the film focuses on the murders of Henry
Roan, Anna Brown, Reta and her white husband Bill
Smith, and Lizzie Q, who were all connected or close to Mollie. And again, this is just
a small amount of the lives taken under William Hale's twisted plot. He and his conspirators
managed to get away with these murders for the lengthy time that they did because in
Osage County, there was no overseeing federal government in place. And it eventually took
the Osage Nation themselves to try and get a layer of
support. Before that happens though, it's really through
the suspictions of Mollie and her family that we see a turn in the events. While Mollie
gets increasingly worried about her safety as her
family begins to be killed off, Mollie’s sister Anna has an argument with Ernest's
brother, Bryan, and soon after, she's brought into the woods and executed. After Mollie’s
mother, Lizzie Q, also passes away, it's revealed
that the control of the oil money will now pass on to Mollie and her children. Mollie’s
other sister, Reta and her white husband, Bill Smith
are murdered in a bombing by William Hale’s man Blackie Thompson, and this makes Mollie
and others decide to try and get help from outside the county. Mollie uses what little
strength she has left to travel with the Osage Nation
leaders to Washington to plead with President Calvin Coolidge for an investigation into
the unsolved murders. Although the President seems
initially hesitant to go ahead with an actual investigation, it does eventually work. But
before that help comes, there's a further issue going on behind Mollie back and it revolves
around her own husband. Ernest has become blind to his uncle's manipulations and goes
ahead with everything he's asked to do. He begins to poison Mollie with the insulin injections,
ones that were originally given to her by the Shoun brothers, the white doctors that
she didn't trust. Ernest continues with the doctors orders to mix the insulin with poison
to slow her down. So at this point in the story it
seems that there is no way out for Mollie. She becoming sicker, with her own husband
administering the poison shots and her family has been
almost entirely murdered at the hands of William Hale without her knowing so. But when her
and other Osage leaders went to Washington, their cry for help was eventually listened
to. Agents from the Bureau of Investigation, which
would later become the FBI, led by Jesse Plemons's Tom White, come to the County to begin looking
into the murders, on behalf of J. Edgar Hoover. Even with the FBI now on site, Hale still
believed he was untouchable, because of those who falsely respected him in the Osage community.
But the Bureau was able to put together the truth after aiming in on a few individuals.
One of those was Ernest, who is questioned for his role in the murders. After putting
the last of the poison dose meant for Mollie into his
own drink, he is later arrested with his uncle turning himself in so that he'd appear innocent.
His attorney Hamilton, played by Brendan Fraser attempts to get Ernest to cover up his
uncle’s role in the killings. And while Ernest initially goes along with it and doesn't
help the FBI, after their youngest child dies of a long illness, he eventually decides to
spill most of the truth in court and go against
his uncle. He shares details about his role in the murders and how he lied to his wife,
admitting that he was working under his uncle’s orders,
but that he married Mollie because he loved her. He then meets with Mollie after the trial
and while he admitted many truthes, he still couldn't admit that he was poisoning her.
Mollie cannot forgive what happened to her family
and she definitelly cannot forgive that the person closest to her heart could poison her
and then not admit that after all he did admit. She does not allow her relationship with him
to define the rest of her life or forget what happened. And the tragic thing about this
story is that while she could not forget, history
chose not to preserve and interoggate this story. Scorsese's film at least challenges
the audience to watch this history, understand it and know that what happened to the Osage
nation and Mollie's family was complete and utter
betrayal. And this mainly takes form through the unique
epilogue that the film presents us with. The ending to certain characters is not revealed
through a set of events with the actors or through information or titles onscreen, but
rather through an episode of the J. Edgar Hoover-endorsed radio drama in the 1950s,
recorded with performers on a theater stage. On top of
this approach the epilogue is ended by director Martin Scorsese himself, with a cameo as the
show host that describes the end of Mollie's life and the tragedy that the Osage were left
with. We learn many details about the later life of characters throughout the entirety
of the show. The Shoun doctors were not convicted as there was not enough evidence. William
Hale was sentenced to life in prison, but was later
released and lived until he was 87. Kelsie Morrison was charged with the murder of Anna.
Ernest was sentenced to life in prison but later
released by a Governor, and died in the 80s, after living with his brother Bryan in a trailer
park. Mollie divorced him, married John William Cobb Jr, and died of diabetes in 1937, but
her children inherited her estate. As Scorsese narrates himself in the final moments, she
was buried at the same cemetery as her family members, but her obituary made no mention
of Ernest or the murders. The U.S. government
began to manage the trust lands and pay the Osage with headrights, but there was a class-action
suit against the Interior in the 90s, and the
tribe had to file a lawsuit again by the year 2000. They claimed that management of the
trust assets had resulted in losses to their funds and interest income. Eventually, the
government did settle with the Osage in 2011, becoming
the largest trust settlement with a tribe in US history for $380 million. In the film's
closing shot, we jump forward in time to an overhead
shot of the Osage tribe, dancing and enduring. While the historical narrative was erased,
this final shot is to celebrate their continued resistance in the face of racism. But that was my video explaining the plot
and ending for Martin Scorsese's killers of the flower moon. I'm going to be posting my
review in the next few days, but overall, I thought the
film was a masterful outing by Scorsese that left me feeling devastated by the end. It's
not a film I'd want to revisit soon because of the horrible things that took place, but
the effective nature of its telling leaves me
thinking about it a lot. There's going to be plenty to discussion about it in the coming
weeks surrounding the questions raised by the ending,
the movie's overall quality, the adaptation of the source material and the narrative's
central messages. But I do hope this breakdown did help some of you guys understand the events
a bit better, and overall, I'm looking forward
to hearing your thoughts on the film, so don't forget to let me know down below in the comments
section. For more on Martin Scorsese's killers of the
flower moon, then subscribe to the channel and turn on your notifications. Also if you
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