Killers of the Flower Moon

How this film uses it

Scorsese deliberately puts Ernest at the center, ahead of the Osage victims. You have to sit inside a man who is too weak and too greedy to stop taking part in the murder of his own family.

Where to see it

Ernest giving insulin overdoses to his wife Mollie while claiming to care for her. The intimacy of poisoning someone at home is shot up close. You don't get the relief of a villain kept at a distance.

How this film uses it

William Hale presents himself as the Osage's greatest friend (he speaks their language, he attends their ceremonies) while directing their murder. The film shows that this act of kinship was how the genocide got done.

Where to see it

Hale among Osage friends at their gatherings. He speaks of his love for them while he directs Ernest toward the next murder.

How this film uses it

At 3 and a half hours, the film uses its length so the murders feel the way they were experienced. That is, as a slow horror in the background that was ignored for years because the perpetrators controlled the story.

Where to see it

The accumulation of Osage deaths over the film's first 2 hours. Each one is noted and mourned but never investigated. The sheer length makes you feel the indifference of the institutions.

How this film uses it

Scorsese ends the film with a radio drama reenactment as a framing device. He appears in it himself and reads Mollie's real obituary. The film then cuts to an overhead shot of a present-day Osage gathering. The distance between the dramatization and the historical record disappears.

Where to see it

The closing act's shift into a radio drama format, then into the overhead shot of a present-day Osage dance. It moves from fiction back toward the people who survived what was done.