OSCAR WATCH 2024 — 'Killers of the Flower Moon' (2023)

This post is part of a series of critical responses to the films nominated for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards.

Before the nominations for the 96th Academy Awards were even announced, I made the overly confident prediction that Killers of the Flower Moon (dir. Martin Scorsese, US 2023) would win Best Picture. As I write this post, the ceremony is approximately a week away, so I have no idea what the actual outcome will be. But my conviction in my initial prediction has diminished substantially in the intervening months. Although I watch the ceremony nearly every year, I do not pay especially close attention to the speculation that precedes it. Nevertheless, my sense is that all of the momentum is currently behind a victory for Oppenheimer (dir. Christopher Nolan, US/UK 2023). As I look back in hindsight, then, I recognize that my initial assumptions about Killers of the Flower Moon’s path to awards success almost certainly say more about how the film tries to position itself within the sweep of American film history than it really does about its specific place in this year’s Best Picture race.

These things can be difficult to quantify, but – prior to the release of Killers of the Flower Moon – it often felt to me as though the film was being treated in press coverage like a referendum on the history of Indigenous representation in Hollywood cinema.

image 1

I am wary of overly straightforward causal narratives, but it is difficult in this case not to read some of that early discourse about the film in light of the recent success of Reservation Dogs (FX, US 2021–2023) and Prey (dir. Dan Trachtenberg, US 2022). As the first American television show entirely written and directed by Indigenous North American filmmakers, Reservation Dogs was a landmark for self-representation. But its appeal was probably always destined to be somewhat niche, compounded in no small part by the show’s preference for intentionally low-key, small-town dramedy. Meanwhile, Prey demonstrated that settler filmmakers – with substantial assistance from Indigenous collaborators – could do representation well in the context of an ostensibly “low brow” genre like sci-fi/action. Prey was similarly popular with critics (and it might have even been a box-office hit if it had not been released directly to the Hulu streaming service), but it was never going to win any of the more prestigious Academy Awards. So along comes Killers of the Flower Moon, seemingly accompanied by the following question: Can a filmmaker with Martin Scorsese’s clout return to traditionally the most fraught genre vis-à-vis Indigenous representation (the western), tell a particularly devastating true story in the history of Indigenous-settler relations, and finally get it right? And, even if the film did “get it right,” (which is destined to be a contentious claim no matter the outcome) would the industry at large recognize and celebrate it? Again, I am hesitant about constructing a teleological narrative around the film. But, with relative ease, one can retroactively read Reservation Dogs and Prey as constituting a landing strip for Killers of the Flower Moon’s efforts not to merely feature “good representation” but to construct a long overdue counterbalance to decades upon decades of the opposite.

This task was – at least, in part – self-assigned when one accounts for the various public comments made by Scorsese and his collaborators about their ambitions for the film. And, given the stakes of that task, it is perhaps not all that surprising that the reaction to Killers of the Flower Moon from those invested in the issue of Indigenous representation has been decidedly mixed. Devery Jacobs (Mohawk), incidentally one of the stars of Reservation Dogs, lambasted the film, describing the Osage characters as “painfully underwritten.” On X (formerly Twitter), she wrote, “I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.” By comparison, Jacob Floyd (Muscogee), an assistant professor of cinema studies at NYU, offered a more positive interpretation in an article written for Film Comment. He contends that Killers of the Flower Moon’s significance lies not merely in its text but also in its production practices, which were undeniably collaborative with the Osage Nation. Considering the polarity of these responses, it feels almost fitting that Christopher Cote (Osage), one of the language consultants who worked on the film, expressed profound ambivalence about the final result. At the Los Angeles premiere, he praised the representation of Osage culture but concluded, “[T]his film isn’t made for an Osage audience, it was made for everybody, not Osage.”

image 2

It is possible that the ambivalent response from Indigenous audiences stalled Killers of the Flower Moon’s award season momentum, although I rather doubt it. It seems just as likely that the film’s subject matter – however imperfectly it may have been handled – sufficiently discomforted a plurality of settler voters at major awards shows to the extent that they felt compelled to look elsewhere for a “best-of-the-year” favorite. And, of course, it is possible that my initial prediction will turn out to have been right all along; Killers of the Flower Moon will win Best Picture, and, in the process, the industry will get to pat itself on the back for how far it has ostensibly come. Either way, the impending ceremony feels like an auspicious occasion to revisit precisely the way in which Killers of the Flower Moon actually structures its own approach to representation. Because, quite frankly, that might be the most interesting aspect of the film.

Especially writing as a settler, it would be incredibly presumptuous of me to weigh in on whether or not the representation is “good” or “bad.” For one thing, the film does not allow for easy answers on that front. I appreciate Floyd’s argument that Lily Gladstone’s (Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce) performance as Mollie Burkhart derives much of its tremendous power from her lack of dialogue; “Gladstone silently conveys indignation, disappointment, and resolve, acting as the story’s moral conscience”.

image 3

But I equally appreciate Jacobs’ assessment that the rest of the Osage characters are treated as little more than extras – props in the narrative machinations of the White protagonists. For another thing, “representation” can be a decidedly limiting framework when thinking about these issues. Good representation is important, to be sure. One need only look at the way that Hollywood has shaped the settler imaginary regarding Indigenous peoples to see that these things do have a tangible impact. But how they have an impact – how representation arises, is taken up, circulates, influences, is subverted/contested, etc. – is thorny. As Floyd’s article reminds us, what is on-screen is never truly separable from the accompanying circumstances of the production. The motivations of the studios, Scorsese, his co-writer Eric Roth, journalist David Grann (author of the source material), Gladstone, actors with executive producer credits like Leonardo DiCaprio, the Osage Nation consultants, and others are all relevant here and also not necessarily in perfect alignment. Likewise, how different audiences respond is not neatly calculable. The range of reactions from Devery to Floyd to Cote – amongst many others – is proof of that. What I find fascinating about Killers of the Flower Moon, though, is not merely that the question of representation is central to the film but that the film itself is oddly reflexive when it comes to that question.

This quality is most evident in the penultimate scene wherein Scorsese appears for a cameo to clarify why he felt compelled to tell the story of the 1918–1931 Osage murders. As he explains, the story has functionally been omitted from the historical record. However, Scorsese’s cameo is diegetically situated as part of an old-timey radio drama that recounts the real-life aftermath of the film’s events in a derisive and frequently racist fashion. One of the actors, for instance, adopts the exaggerated and stereotypical “Indian voice” made famous by Hollywood westerns when voicing the Indigenous characters. While undoubtedly an intriguing narrative choice in isolation, this penultimate scene really exists as a culmination of Killers of the Flower Moon’s persistent meditation on how knowledge about Indigenous peoples has historically been produced and circulated in settler society. For instance, the film’s protagonist, Ernest Burkhart, learns about Osage culture from an anthropological book clearly authored by White settlers. Likewise, the Osage characters are frequently asked to pose for photographs, recalling Edward S. Curtis’s notorious work of salvage ethnography, The North American Indian (1907–1930) photographic compendium. During the scene where the Osage delegation visits Washington D.C., Scorsese even voices the photographer who instructs the characters to look at the camera as they pose. In short, Killers of the Flower Moon is nothing if not aware of the long history of settler mediations of Indigeneity – from radio to books to cinema to photography – that have constructed the seemingly unshakeable stereotypes and conventions with which this film must now grapple.

image 4

But, amidst all this reflexivity, does the film actually manage to escape the gravitational pull of that history? Even as he attempts to honestly address his own investment in this story as a settler filmmaker, Scorsese situates himself in the context of a radio show that propagates an unmistakable settler callousness to Indigenous lives and lifeways. (Nearly identical dynamics are at play in Scorsese’s decision to voice the photographer in Washington D.C., although this detail is far less overt than the radio show cameo.) In his article, Floyd notes, “Scorsese is perhaps acknowledging his own position as a non-Native outsider presenting this account.” Undoubtedly this is true, but it also necessitates the follow-up question: What comes next? Having acknowledged Scorsese’s positionality and, in turn, his limits when it comes to telling a story about Indigenous trauma, what – if anything – does Killers of the Flower Moon choose to do with that acknowledgement?

The film’s answer comes in the form of the final scene, which consists of a single overhead shot depicting the Osage I’n Lon-Schka ceremonial dance. The fairly obvious intent of this epilogue is to remind the spectator that Osage culture has not merely survived; even in the face of ongoing settler colonial violence, it thrives. (Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Cote argued the film was not made for an Osage audience; one imagines that they do not need Scorsese to remind them that their culture still exists.) But just as important to this scene is its formal construction. For over a minute, Scorsese’s camera gradually pulls back from a drum to eventually show the entire dance from a distanced god’s eye view. The shot recalls the very first cinematic representations of Indigenous peoples in film history. In 1894, William K. L. Dickson and William Heise made a series of short films in Thomas Edison’s Black Maria studio featuring a group of Indigenous actors who were all members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. The two most famous remnants from this endeavor – Buffalo Dance (dir. William K. L. Dickson, US 1894) and Sioux Ghost Dance (dir. William K. L. Dickson, US 1894) – film the actors at a distance as they perform ostensibly “traditional” ceremonial dances. (As Alison Griffiths (2001) notes, “[T]he Ghost Dance depicted in the Edison film was not the solemn circle dance associated with the spiritual movement of that name, but a different circle dance” (103), suggesting a degree of subversive agency on the part of the Indigenous performers.) However different the underlying intent from the filmmakers may have been, it is striking how closely Scorsese’s final shot resembles Dickson’s gaze – a gaze that quite literally initiated the entire intervening history of Indigenous on-screen representation in American film history.

To my mind, this throws into sharp relief the discourse that frames Killers of the Flower Moon as a referendum on the entire history of that mode of representation. Indeed, it suggests to me that whether or not Killers of the Flower Moon succeeds at the Academy Awards (which is to say, whether or not Hollywood chooses to implicitly congratulate itself for finally “getting it right”) may be beside the point. It would certainly be nice if Hollywood studios and filmmakers took the right lessons to heart here regarding the importance of working collaboratively with Indigenous communities, especially when the director is not Indigenous. Likewise, I think that Lily Gladstone losing a rightfully deserved Best Actress award would be a travesty. But, in terms of the larger politics of representation, what would be the actual impact of a symbolic victory for Killers of the Flower Moon if it wins Best Picture? Through its reflexive examination of the intertwined vectors of mediation and settler knowledge production, the film repeatedly grapples with the ethics of its own representation. Yet, when it is all said and done, it arrives at a film grammar established in 1894. What an awfully long way to come – 129 years of film history and three-and-a-half hours of runtime – to arrive right back at the beginning.

Note: I would like to thank Aandaxjoon Sabena Allen for providing valuable feedback. And I would like to thank J.D. Connor for initially drawing my attention to the parallels between Killers of the Flower Moon and the early Edison films.

Biography

Sebastian Wurzrainer is a settler scholar and a second year PhD student in cinema and media studies at the University of Southern California. He received his bachelor’s degree in film and media studies from Dartmouth College and his master’s degree in cinema and media studies from the University of Southern California. His research considers how Indigenous filmmakers, actors, and spectators enact sovereignty, survivance, and relationality in and around Hollywood films, particularly works of speculative fiction, thereby illustrating alterities to the settler colonial project. He has published reviews and articles in the Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and Spectator.