The Native Americans can, and should, tell their own stories

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.