“Killers of the Flower Moon”, Scorsese delves into the depths of the human soul

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“And the day of the most awaited film of the Cannes Film Festival 2023 came: “Killers of the Flower Moon” was presented out of competition, the new feature film by Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
Based on the 2017 investigative book of the same name, written by American journalist David Grann, the film focuses on what happened in Osage County in the early 1920s. Several oil fields had been discovered in that area and a series of murders had occurred in parallel, involving some wealthy citizens of the Osage Indian tribe as victims. For these reasons, the FBI launched an investigation into the suspicious deaths.

Opening with a sequence showing a suggestive Native American ritual, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is a film that describes the traditions of the tribe with great attention and respect, also offering a series of sequences with a very strong mystical flavor. Written by director together with Eric Roth, screenwriter of films such as “Forrest Gump” and “Insider – Behind the truth”, the film has a perfectly calibrated script, full of many well-developed characters and capable of digging forcefully into the darkest abyss and disturbing of the human soul: there is no doubt that, also for this reason, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is also a political film, as well as an important historical postcard on a terrible American story that should not be forgotten.

Great pace and amazing actors

The long duration (about 3 hours and 30 minutes) is not a problem at all, on the contrary: “Killers of the Flower Moon” is a film that flies lightly from start to finish, in fact without sagging thanks to the excellent editing by Thelma Schoonmaker and to the soundtrack by Robbie Robertson, both very trusted collaborators of the American director. Scorsese turned eighty last November, but he always remains a director with a very modern eye, as also demonstrated by his wonderful previous feature film, “The Irishman” of 2019 Despite some overly didactic passages in the course of the narration, Scorsese proves to be a master in managing such a complex production, managing to give all the styles and genres staged (from western to gangster) a high-level cinematic breath. It is also a pleasure to see two of the greatest “Scorsesian” actors play together – it is the sixth collaboration between the director and DiCaprio; the tenth between Scorsese and De Niro – who give life to an extraordinary duet: both in excellent shape, the two protagonists are the added value of a film that we will still hear about for a long time. It should be remembered that “Killers of the Flower Moon” will be released in theaters this October, before later streaming on Apple TV+.