Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Film Editing 
The Osage Nation had been pushed from their ancestral lands by the U.S. government and forcibly resettled on land in Oklahoma that was widely considered to be worthless. But karma is a bitch and the Osage struck oil, turning them overnight into the richest people per capita on planet Earth. Naturally, white people couldn't allow that to stand and began to systematically murder the Osage heirs. Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns home from the Great War and is recruited by his uncle, King Hale (Robert De Niro) to woo Mollie (Lily Gladstone), one of the richest heiresses. Mollie sees what is happening all around her but her ability to affect change is curtailed by her race and gender. She can't even access her own money without a white husband. And yet, she persists, hiring private investigators and petitioning the Bureau of Indian Affairs to do something about the blatant robbery and murder.
This movie took me three days to get through. I would watch about 20 minutes, get overwhelmed by rage/disgust/sorrow, and turn it off to watch something happier and more life-affirming, like True Detective.
Martin Scorsese is 80-years-old and is considered one of the greatest living filmmakers. My personal theory is that he is completely tired of people missing the whole-ass point of Goodfellas for 40 years and has decided to just do away completely with subtlety. Between this and The Irishman, the message is clear. These are garbage people doing despicable things that they don't really even profit from. Killers of the Flower Moon beats you over the head with it, just in case you don't really get it. It tells you verbally about the atrocities, then shows you, just so you can't claim you didn't understand. It's the 10th grade book report thesis statement of movies.
That being said, this is probably the best work De Niro has turned in in decades. People keep saying DiCaprio got snubbed but I don't think he did. He basically played the same character from The Revenant only with worse teeth and Vito Corleone jowls. Cinematography is great but editing is where this movie really shines. Gladstone rightfully is up for Best Actress and is the odds-on favorite but I wouldn't call it a lock yet. Production design, costumes, and score are fine. Nothing we haven't seen before. I would love it if "Wazhazhe" won Best Original Song, though. It's currently streaming on Apple+.
No comments:
Post a Comment