Killers of the Flower Moon

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON – Robbie Robertson

October 24, 2023 1 comment

Killers of the Flower Moon is the latest film from revered director Martin Scorsese. It tells the true, but mostly unknown, story of the so-called ‘Osage Indian Murders,’ which happened in Oklahoma over the course of many years in the 1910s and 20s. The Osage Native American tribe, having forcibly been removed from their ancestral homeland to a dusty, barren area of Oklahoma, became fabulously wealthy almost overnight when oil was discovered on their land. Naturally, the white men of the time couldn’t just let the Osage be rich and live in peace – the concept of ‘manifest destiny’ and racism against the ‘redskins’ has a lot to answer for – and so they started moving into the area, trying to think of ways to take control of the oil for themselves. The most evil and twisted plot they concocted was the one cooked up by cattle baron Bill ‘King’ Hale that forms the core of this film: he and his nephews Ernest Burkhart and Byron Burkhart would insidiously earn the trust of the Osage elders, seduce and marry the women of one of the wealthiest families, and then over time murder the women so that the oil rights eventually passed to the white men. The film stars Robert De Niro as Hale, Leonardo Di Caprio as Ernest, and the brilliant Lily Gladstone as Ernest’s Osage wife Millie, with Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, and Brendan Fraser in supporting roles, Jesse Plemons as the FBI man sent in to solve the crime, and many real members of the current Osage nation playing their own ancestors. Read more…