I remember feeling a bit shell-shocked after watching 'The Irishman' for the first time. I felt drained, and not just by the film’s extreme length. It marked a massive departure from what I associated with Martin Scorsese; I expect the bleak conclusions and the desperate downfalls, but I also look forward to the thrill of the thing, the voracious highs of films like 'Goodfellas' or 'The Wolf of Wall Street.' 'The Irishman' had strikingly few of these moments. Scorsese’s usual gangster film had morphed into some sort of relentless death march, offering no possibility for salvation, certifying man’s impenetrable attraction towards destruction. The experience was so depressing that I initially convinced myself that I hadn’t enjoyed the film I’d just seen. In fact, I hadn’t, though I would quickly come around to its undeniable genius.
In every way that 'The Irishman' subverts Scorsese’s usual energetic style, 'Killers of the Flower Moon' goes several bleak steps further. 'Silence' seems to have marked the beginning of Scorsese’s era of godless cinema. If there is a God watching over the town of Gray Horse, he is dying. The film’s atmosphere is a slow-acting poison that drains all energy and all meaning from its characters’ actions. Ernest, portrayed brilliantly by Leonardo DiCaprio, is not a wolf. He is simply stupid. He allows himself to become the puppet of the menacing ‘King’ Hale for seemingly no other reason than greed. Of this I am not even entirely convinced; Ernest repeatedly voices his love for money, even saying outright that he loves it “almost as much” as his wife, but these statements feel as hollow as the rest of his character. He goes to great lengths to convince himself that the money is worth it, that he covets it with the same ferocious appetite as his idol, Hale. These oft-repeated affirmations fall flat. He is killing his wife, and growing richer because of it, but to what end? What awaits him?
Ernest is not a wolf, no. He is a parasite. He latches onto Hale, then to Molly, just as Hale has latched onto the Osage Nation, quietly draining their blood. Ernest certainly does not have any aspirations or goals of any kind. One wonders what he might construct on his nefariously won land, or on what he may spend his ill-begotten riches. In following this train of thought, we come up empty. There is a great expanse of nothingness behind Ernest’s dead eyes. He is a cog in Hale’s machine. Even when he attempts to stop the gears from turning, it is too late. He was never a man. His humanity was forsaken the day he arrived in Gray Horse like a stray dog seeking shelter. His hope of salvation evaporated then, too. Nothing, not even an act of direct defiance resulting in Hale’s downfall, can mend that. He is lost, and because of his actions, his wife and children are lost as well.
I mentioned before that this is a godless film, and I think that holds true in the context of Scorsese’s usual brand of Christian theologizing. However, this is not to suggest that the film is not spiritual. In some of Killers’ most arresting moments, we step into the perspective of the Osage, and encounter a spiritual plane. These encounters occur only in the moments surrounding death; an owl appears to warn both Molly and her mother of their impending demise, and several figures arrive to bear Molly’s mother into the afterlife when she passes. This is new ground for Scorsese; spiritualism manifests here not as a gateway to salvation but as a natural element of the world, one that must witness its own destruction at the hands of the invaders, helpless to stop it, resigned to the inevitability of death. In Killers, death is a kindness. Life is slow, unbearable torture. Here 'The Irishman' is recalled once again.
The brilliance of this film, the reason it stands out amongst Scorsese’s many masterworks, is its ending. Everything I’ve said above, every piece of analysis that hopes to mine something from the film’s characterization of its subjects, is rendered meaningless by the final ten minutes. We are yanked from the film’s bleak world and thrust into a crude stage play, complete with voice actors and sound effects. It is in this manner which Scorsese chooses to deliver the film’s epilogue. We learn that each of the characters die, even Molly. We learn that Ernest’s pitiful attempts to mend his destruction had no effect whatsoever. We learn, finally, that the Osage murders went unmentioned at Molly’s funeral. Martin Scorsese tells us this himself, staring directly into the camera. We have no choice but to confront what we have just seen as at once important and exploitative. We have just spent over three hours in a movie theater taking some sort of perverse pleasure from a recounting of real death and destruction. We look to a man, Scorsese, to guide us through, to give us permission to look. He cannot. He will not. We are not allowed to see the end.
The final shot flips the responsibility to us. A great eye, composed of members of the Osage nation, stares us down. Now we are the ones watched, and we are expected to act. Never has a film’s ending left me so completely astounded.
'Killers of the Flower Moon' is a masterpiece. It confronts cinema itself head-on in a way only its true master can effectively execute, while still delivering on the promises inherent in its framework. DiCaprio and De Niro give career-best performances, and still Gladstone manages to steal the show with ease. These are things we should not take for granted.
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