![]() Thus, the whites feel the need to wrest wealth from them cunningly, and how this is done makes the story of the film, in spite of its running time of approximately three and a half hours, very simple – a tale of exploitation. The Osage already controls ownership of it. ![]() In this case, however, oil is not to be had by staking claims to land. The newfound wealth of the Osage inspires greed and, as such, draws in white migrants wishing to partake of the bonanza, and the scenes in the film at the train station echo those of the various gold rushes of the preceding century. Later in the film, Hale even sets his farm aflame in an attempted act of insurance fraud, strongly suggesting that it is simply not economically viable. His land has proven to be barren in terms of oil, and as such, his farm is still replete with huge herds of cattle, while the neighboring land is covered instead with the early types of oil rigs. This transformation in the valuation of land is symbolically depicted in the film by the neighboring farm of the character of William Hale, played with understated brilliance by Robert De Niro. However, it unexpectedly turns out that the land they are on is, in fact, rich in oil, which turns the Osage wealthy almost overnight. The film covers the fate of the Osage people, whose expulsions from the more expansive lands of North America in earlier generations have driven them onto an apparently unpromising part of Oklahoma. Oil has played a key role in creating such an economy and, as such, is referred to in the film as “black gold.” It reflects the economic shift that had increasingly come to dominate the world then and is still with us today – that of the shift in the concept of wealth from farmland to that of money as a means of exchange in a complex economy. Yet, in belonging to the twentieth century, the events of this film reflect certain differences in detail, if not the fundamental scenario. The story of the film is a tiny coda to the long drawn-out genocide experienced by the native peoples of North America from the arrival of the first settlers from Britain on the continent at the beginning of the 17th century, and greatly intensified under the American Republic in the 19th century. The main theme is one of the main themes of American history itself – the exploitation by white men of the original inhabitants of the continent. This is not a criticism, as the subject matter upon which this film is based is grim, and the film, correctly, deserves to have this portrayed in its presentation. Yet, the theme from the beginning to end is one long act of violence and the whole film is unremittingly pervaded by it. It does contain what may be regarded as trademark Scorsese elements, such as a flap of skull on the back of a victim’s head coming loose, but compared to many of his other films, in terms of explicit violence, it is restrained. ![]() In the commonly understood sense of violence, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is not Martin Scorsese’s most violent film. ![]()
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