White gaze: Scorsese’s advisor Christopher Cote said he wished the movie had been from the perspective of Mollie Burkhart (left, played by Lily Gladstone), the main Osage character, rather than of Ernest Burkhart (played by Dicaprio), her white husband. But it would take an Osage to film that. — Apple TV /TNS
ONLY a director of Martin Scorsese’s status could eschew exploitation and abuse privilege in the same movie. His Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, displays unusual sensitivity in the depiction of the Osage community in which its story is set. This represents a welcome evolution from the racial stereotyping that has long blighted Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans.
But the movie, Apple Inc.’s most ambitious big-screen bet yet, is also an advertisement for Hollywood’s other troubling tendencies, such as extravagant spending and an over-dependence on stars. If the story told in Killers of the Flower Moon is unusual, the story about the making of the movie is all too familiar. A celebrated director is given upwards of US$200mil to indulge in a passion project, resulting in a sprawling, three-and-a-half hour saga that gets clobbered in the box office by a movie about a concert tour. What’s more, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour reportedly cost south of US$20mil.
Based on real events, captured in David Grann’s 2017 book, the film is about the murder of Osage people for their oil wealth in the 1920s. Perhaps inevitably, the making of the movie was attended by concerns over whether Scorsese would do the tribe justice.Scorsese himself told Time magazine he came to recognise that “I was making a movie about all the white guys.”
Inevitably, there are questions about whether the movie should have been made by a white director at all – and from a book written by a white man. Christopher Cote, one of the advisers recruited by Scorsese, told The Hollywood Reporter he wishes the movie had been from the perspective of Mollie Burkhart, the main Osage character, rather than of Ernest Burkhart, her white husband. But, Cote added, “it would take an Osage to do that.”
Might Apple have done better to hire a Native American filmmaker and base the screenplay on the writings of an Osage author, like John Joseph Mathews? Lily Gladstone, who plays Mollie Burkhart, has acknowledged it is unlikely any studio would have splurged US$200mil on such a project.
Happily, that need no longer be an impediment. The evolution of the way entertainment content is produced – and consumed – allows for small-budget movies and TV series to reach wider audiences than ever before.
A Native American filmmaker adhering to the streaming best practices that Apple abjured in hiring Scorsese, DiCaprio and De Niro should be able to produce a compelling series on the Osage murders. And, if done well, it should be able to resonate with viewers who are already displaying a growing appetite for non-Hollywood content, from Korean gore to Israeli spy drama. The platforms are there, and so is the audience.
And even if Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t set box office records, it may have done a service to the Osage Nation – and other Native American communities – even just by hinting at the many stories they have to tell.
And Hollywood should let them. – Bloomberg
