Killers of the Flower Moon

Last week we had an unexpected opportunity to go to the cinema and watch Killers of the Flower Moon as both kids were not at home. Even though the movie was only released mid October we had to look for a theatre that was still playing it. We were in luck that it was still playing in Cinema Lumiere in Mechelen and we didn’t have to go to Brussel or Antwerp. Cinema Lumiere is more of an old style city cinema and not a modern megaplex type of cinema. Housed in the center of the city in a nice building that adds a bit of nostalgia. Technology is up to date but the rooms are a bit smaller. We saw the movie in a room that had maybe 200 seats max. We arrived a little early so we could enjoy a nice local Gouden Carolus Tripel before the start of the movie. Not having done a lot of homework we were surprised that the movie took 3,5 hours. Luckily there was a 10 minute intermission half way for those that needed a pit stop. The movie is definitely long but it doesn’t feel like 3,5 hours. This is all the more remarkable as there is not a lot of frantic action. A lot happens and there are many unexplained deaths of relatively young native Americans of the Osage tribe but they form the back ground and the movie focuses on the marriage between Ernest Burkhart (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and the Osage Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone). Ernest gets caught up in the web of his uncle William King Hale (Robert De Niro) who is after the oil headrights of the Osage. Presenting himself as a friend of the Osage King Hale is secretly ordering contract killings to obtain the headrights. Ernest loves his wife but still organises the murder of one of her sisters when ordered so by King Hale. The movie is based on true events chronicled in a 2017 book by the American journalist David Grann. The story is depressing but the superb acting of Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro make it ‘digestible’. Watching the movie in the cinema also helps even though the Oklahoma landscape desecrated by the digging for oil does not result in beautiful landscapes. Watching in the cinema really removes the world and only the movie screen remains. Besides pure cinema this movie is also a lesson of an ugly and relatively unknown part in recent American history. Quite striking is a scene in which Ernest tries to enlist someone for a murder. The man first responds that he doesn’t do killings. When Ernest replies that is an Osage that needs to be murdered the man comments casually that in that case it is different. Killing an Osage is evidently not considered to be true murder.