Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese · 2023
In 1920s Oklahoma, the Osage Nation's vast oil wealth attracts a wave of white predators — most insidiously, Ernest Burkhart, whose murderous uncle William Hale directs a systematic campaign of murder against the tribe through the family he married Ernest into. Scorsese's film is a sustained indictment of American colonial violence told from inside the machinery of its perpetration.
Techniques Used
4 techniques identified in this film
Perpetrator Perspective
NarrativeA narrative choice to follow the characters committing atrocity rather than those suffering it, forcing the audience into complicity with acts they might otherwise judge from safety.
How this film uses it
Scorsese deliberately centers Ernest rather than the Osage victims — making the audience inhabit a man too weak and too greedy to stop participating in the murder of his own family.
False Kinship Exploitation
NarrativeA narrative structure in which a character or institution uses the language and gestures of family, friendship, or love to systematically exploit a vulnerable other.
How this film uses it
William Hale presents himself as the Osage's greatest friend — speaking their language, attending their ceremonies — while directing their murder. The film shows how this performance of kinship was the mechanism of genocide.
Slow Build Runtime
NarrativeA narrative that uses its extended length deliberately, building meaning through accumulation rather than compression, with each scene adding emotional weight rather than plot.
How this film uses it
At three and a half hours, the film uses its length to make the murders feel as they were experienced — as a slow, ambient horror that was ignored for years because the perpetrators controlled the narrative.
Historical Compositing
CinematographyThe integration of period photography, documented imagery, or historical records into a dramatic film to anchor fiction in documented fact.
How this film uses it
Scorsese ends the film with a radio drama reenactment framing device and a series of period photographs of actual Osage victims — collapsing the distance between dramatization and historical record.
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