With Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese proves that time doesn’t matter for a great storyteller [REVIEW]

Four years after the launch of The Irishmanhis most recent feature film, Martin Scorsese is back in cinemas starting this Thursday, October 19th, with Flower Moon Assassins (Killers of the Flower Moon).

Based on the book Flower Moon Killers: Oil, Death and the Origin of the FBIin David Grannthe film is set in Oklahoma, in the United States, in the 1920s, and portrays the serial murder of members of the Osage Indian tribe amid the search for oil in the region they lived in.

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During this period, which became known as the Reign of Terror, we met Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), who moves to Osage County to live and work with his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), better known as Bill or King.

He gets a job as a driver and soon falls in love with one of his clients, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), member of one of the richest families in the Osage tribe, but which quickly begins to be dismantled by the terrible murders, which haunt her every day with the possibility of being the next victim.

Ernestthen, finds himself torn between the love he feels for Molliewith whom he ends up marrying and forming a family, and loyalty to his uncle, an apparently good man who is allied with the Osage and their struggle, but who doesn’t care who he needs to overthrow in order to become increasingly rich and powerful.

Even before the premiere of Flower Moon Assassins, there was a heated discussion on social media about the length of the film. From a misinterpreted joke that, now, Martin Scorsese he only made miniseries, due to extensive productions he worked on in recent years, such as The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and The Irishman (2019), X, formerly Twitter, went to war for a few hours until tempers calmed down or platform users migrated to another discussion.

The filmmaker has directed films lasting 3h, 2h30, 2h and 1h30, directed episodes of series, the iconic music video for Badin Michael Jackson, and – amazingly – even short films. But the problem lies in the duration of the productions of a filmmaker of the caliber of Scorseseone of the most respected directors in cinema, or the lack of patience of those who are getting used to consuming more and enjoying less?

With Flower Moon Assassins, Scorsese proves that the time to tell a story is much less relevant than knowing how to tell a story – and it is with ease that he seems to tell the story of his new film, creating a mix of drama, suspense, romance and even humor in a plot that makes the viewer asks for more, just because it’s great to watch a story told by him.

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If the filmmaker needed to shorten the film, he would certainly do it masterfully. If he needed to stretch, too. But Scorsese takes just as long as necessary to tell the story of Flower Moon Assassinswhich is full of dualities, represented in the figure of Ernest Burkharta man trapped in his own innocence, who is not so good nor so bad, who loves, but does not know the value of loving as well as he knows the value of money.

Flower Moon Assassins It portrays a sad episode, it’s true, but it moves away from being a documentary about the Reign of Terror to give us the possibility of observing and feeling whatever we may feel while digesting the story. It’s like a soap opera, in which each new action of its characters, whether good guys or villains, awakens new feelings and makes your head spin until, at the end of the entire story, we can give the verdict on each of them.

Scorsese’s refined skills, at the height of his 80s, serve as a reminder that – in a time when people have less and less patience to keep their cell phones in their pockets and new productions tend to adapt to this form of “consumption” – cinema remains one of the most exciting experiences in life. There is no need to take up arms to defend the filmmaker in a senseless “virtual war”. Just disconnect from your cell phone for a few hours, run to the cinema and let your work speak for itself. I guarantee, the experience is rewarding.