Director Martin Scorsese's new film, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ tells the true story of a series of murders on Osage Nation lands in Oklahoma in the 1920’s.

Based on David Grann's meticulously researched book 2017, the film delves into the racial and family dynamics that shook Oklahoma to its core when oil was discovered on Osage lands.

Before filming his last film, Scorsese decided to change the script to give more emphasis to other characters when he realized that the film focused too much on white men. Following its revision, the historical drama remains centered on a white man, Ernst Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. But the premise of the film is the love marriage between Ernst and a Native American woman, Mollie Kyle who is brilliantly played by Lily Gladstone. In Los Angeles, we had the opportunity to speak virtually with the director.

 Q: You have a voracious appetite for telling stories. Do you feel that your cinema gives a voice to those who do not have one?

A: It is the stories of others that inspire me to make my films. Each one of them takes me to a completely new world. As a filmmaker I consider myself a teacher who shows a possible dialogue through cinema.

 Q: What was the reason that led you to film ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’?

A: Since I read the book it was important for me to create awareness about the real situation of the Native Americans and indigenous people of this country. I wanted to treat this culture in a respectful way without being hagiographic, without falling into Rousseau's native novel. My big question regarding the script was: How truthful can we be in representing this story with authenticity, respect and dignity? I decided to tell the story by involving myself in Osage culture so that I could place cultural elements, rituals and spiritual moments based on mystical realism: when the dream is real. I wanted to show the contrast between the Osage culture and the white European world.

 Q: Cinema is a window to other cultures

A: That happened to me. Cinema opened the door to other cultures for me. I was always interested in how other people think. And I have often wondered what it would be like to be colonized. Finding the history of the Osage was to represent almost all the indigenous peoples of the world who have felt taken advantage of by dominant civilizations of another culture. Those who have been colonized or even rejected outright.

Q: Is there any author from Spanish culture that you would like to mention?

A: I’ve been obsessed with slow motion since I first saw films. I guess for me, the slow motion dreams in Los Olvidados, from the Spanish director Luis Buñuel, is something that stayed with me for a long time.  I love the way people’s expressions change and the movement of the flesh on the arms. It’s very, very high speed this camera, Phantom. I felt like it would be only two places: the Joe Colombo shooting in Columbus Circle and the wedding itself, because the wedding is a funeral. People laugh, ‘Oh, mob hits, and that sort of thing,’ but the Colombo thing gave me a chance to capture the pain of it, the suffering of all the people around, you see all their faces. You see the family, the wife screaming. You see the hands grabbing the gun. It’s almost like a Biblical tableau what I was going for. I think this camera gave it to me, but one has to be quite sparing with it, and I like the trance-like film. If I have to pick a book, I will say Don Quixote.

Q: Do you speak Spanish?

A: Not enough to be able to understand movies in Spanish. I would love to be able to see more movies in Spanish.

Q:  What steps did you take to ensure that the Osage community felt accurately represented?

A: At first, I said: “Well, if you want me to be involved with anything that has to do with indigenous people and Native Americans, has to be in a way that is respectful, also is not Hagiographic and doesn’t fall into, Rousseau like, the noble native, that sort of thing. Having said that, that story, when I read it, indicated to me that this would probably be the one that we could deal with that way. And particularly by getting involved with the culture of the Osage; placing cultural elements, rituals, spiritual moments. I wanted to play with that world in contrast with the White European world. Ultimately, what happened was that we were dealing with the script on the basis of David Grann’s book, which is excellent. But the David Grann book also has the subtitle ‘The Birth of the FBI.’ And, for about two years, I was doing ‘Irishman’ and  I felt that we took the story of the birth of the FBI as far as we could take it.

And I wanted to keep balancing with the Osage. Meeting was with Chief Standing Bear and his group: Julie and Addie Roanhorse, and Chad Renfro. And it was very different from what I expected. They were naturally cautious. I had to explain to them that I was going to be as honest and truthful as possible. We weren’t going to fall into the trap of the cliche of victims, or the drunken Indian, or all of this sort of thing, and yet tell the story as straight as possible. What I didn’t really understand the first couple of meetings was that this is an ongoing situation, an ongoing story out in Oklahoma. In other words, these are things that really weren’t talked about in the generation above them, before them I should say. It was the generation before them that this happened to. And so, they didn’t talk about it much. And the people involved are still there, meaning the families are still there, the descendants are still there. And so, what I learned is that a lot of the White guys there, a lot of the European-Americans, particularly Bill Hale, were good and people just didn’t believe at the time that Bill would be capable of such things.

Q: You moved the script toward the love story?

A: Yes.  One has to remember that Ernest loved Mollie, and Mollie loved Ernest. It’s a love story. And so, ultimately, what happened is that the script shifted that way. And that’s when Leo decided to play Ernest instead of Tom White. And by that point, we started reworking the script and it became gritty. Instead of from the outside in, coming in and finding out who did it, you know, when in reality it’s who didn’t do it. It’s a story of complicity. It’s a story of sin by omission, silent complicity in cases, certain cases. And so, that’s what afforded us the opportunity to open the picture up and start from the inside out.

Q: The film takes place in Oklahoma, and you were adamant about shooting the movie there. How did you begin to visualize the film taking place there?

A: Well, I think the first time was in 2019, I think. It’s a little confusing because after the shooting of ‘Irishman’ COVID hit. We had at least two trips there before COVID. And for me, being a New Yorker. I’m very urban. I don’t understand weather that much, or where the sun is when you’re on the set. I was very surprised to learn that it is set in the west. That’s because I was driving down Sunset Boulevard one time about 30 years ago, and I saw the sun setting. And I said, “That’s great. It’s Sunset Boulevard. The sun sets in the west. Now I get it.” Anyway, when I got there, all I can tell you is that those prairies are quite something. And they open your mind and your heart. They are just beautiful. And especially, driving on these roads, through a prairie and on both sides, wild horses, bison, and cows.  It was idyllic.  I realized this is a place where you don’t need the law. I mean, you have the law, but the law isn’t working the same way. You can make the law work for you if you’re smart enough, and many people do. But what I mean by that is that it’s still a wide-open territory. You have law, but it’s a wide-open territory, so the place, as beautiful as it is, can shift to being very sinister. And what I wanted to capture, ultimately, was the very nature of the virus that creates this sense of a kind of easygoing genocide. And that’s why we went with the story with Mollie and Ernest because that’s the basis of the love. Love is the basis of trust. So, when there’s betrayal that way, that deep, is how we found our story.

Q: You wanted to tell the story, both historically accurate, but emotionally resonant?

A: This was a constant, historically accurate. And I should use the word truthful. You can have a ritual and you shoot a ritual as the way it should be. We had a lot of support from the Osage authority, the experts who were giving us the indication about how to go about these things. We tested the accuracy of the rituals, the baby naming, the wedding, the funerals, everything that happened at the funerals, all of this sort of thing. And so, in some cases, there was wiggle room because, quite honestly, I think the last two generations of Osage forgot about or were taken out of their experience because they have to become, like, White European. They had to become Christians, Catholics, whatever. And so, they forgot about all that. In fact, there’s a new resurgence of learning of the language. And we had language teachers on set, and Lily Gladstone learned the language, and so did Leo, and so did De Niro, who really fell in love with it, and wanted to do more scenes in Osage.

Q: So now let's talk about some people that you have worked with before quite a bit. You've formed a 20-year partnership with Leo DiCaprio, and a 50-year partnership with Robert De Niro. Why have you returned to them both so often over the years, and what has stood out to you most about their work on ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’?

A: In the case of Robert De Niro, we were teenagers together.  He's the only one who really knows where I come from, the people I know. Some of them are still alive. He knows them. I know his friends, his old friends, and we had a real testing ground in the  70s, where we tried everything and we found that we trusted each other. It's all about trust and love. It's what it is. And that's a big deal, because very often if an actor has a lot of power, and he had a lot of power at that time, an actor could take over your picture. Studio gets angry with you; the actor comes in and takes it over. With him, I never felt that. There was freedom, there was experimenting, and also not being afraid of anything. I wasn't afraid to do something. I just did it. And years later, he told me he worked with this kid, Leo DiCaprio, a little boy, in ‘This Boy's Life’, and he said: “You should work with this kid sometime.” It was just casual. But within a line, something like that, a recommendation at that time, I think in the early '90s, is not casual. He says it casually, but he rarely says that. He rarely gave recommendations. And so years go by, and I'm presented with Leo, with ‘Gangs of New York’, and we worked together in Gangs. He made Gangs possible,  actually. He loved the pictures I've made, and he wanted to explore the same territory. And so we developed more of a relationship when we did ‘The Aviator.’ And towards the end of it, there was a kind of something happening, but we really clicked in certain scenes. And that led to ‘Departed’, and then that became much closer. Maybe other people have relationships where they come up with it faster. Well, we don't. It's really, you know, it's trust. Particularly doing ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, by the way. He came up with wonderful stuff that was outrageous, and so I pushed him. He pushed me, then I pushed him more, then he pushed me, and suddenly everything was wild. He had a good energy too on the set.

Q: Your films have long been criticized for their violence. Has your relationship with the depiction of violence changed?

A: They have been asking me this question since 1972. Violence is not going to disappear if you don't look at it, if you sweep it under the rug. If you live like this you will be very surprised, God forbid, if one day you meet her. You have to know what the human being is capable of. You have to understand that there is another way of thinking: let's go back to Greek tragedy, where everything happens offstage. One does not have to delight in violence. People enjoy watching or creating violence, but not everyone does. But that's part of human nature. Denying or avoiding violence makes the situation worse.

Q: Do you have hope for the future of cinema?

A: It offers me some hope that a different cinema will emerge, seeing that two films like Barbie and Oppenheimer have triumphed this summer at the box office.

Both titles offer something different from what has been happening in the last 20 years, beyond the great work being done in independent cinema. That always bothers me, that independent films are relegated to the category of ‘indies’. Movies that only a certain type of people watch.

Q: Can you discuss your creative decisions and how you wanted to tell this story in both a historically accurate and emotionally resonant way?

A: Well, we had started out basic, and on David Grann's excellent book. Myself and Eric Roth on the script. And we had taken over a period of two years working on the script, during which time I did Irishman with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. And we took the character of Tom White that Leo was gonna play, we felt after a couple of years, we took it to its limit. We felt that ultimately the story as seen through the eyes of the Bureau of Investigation coming in from Washington and to this area to find out who did it, when as David Grann pointed out, it isn't a matter of who did it; who didn't do it. Once I began to understand more complicity and how we all may be culpable ourselves in life to many things like this or in many different ways, that, and the fact that I got to know a lot of the Osage people, 'cause I kept going back to Oklahoma, and I kept hearing stories, and they kept speaking about, you know, their families are still there.

I mean, Margie Burkhart got up and pointed out, you know, naturally, they were a little concerned the kind of films I'm known for, which, you know, underworld violence, that sort of thing. But she had seen Silence, and she got up at a big dinner and talked about me making Silence, but also, she pointed out, and she's the great-granddaughter of Ernest Burkhart, that Ernest and Mollie were in love. And that a lot of these deceptions and betrayals and murders came out of people who really liked each other. Including Bill Hale and Henry Roan. They considered each other, I was told, they were best friends. And I said, well, while that was going on and we were pushing your investigation story and that, I found that ultimately we were stuck. We really couldn't get into the very real, or the true nature of what this tragedy was. At which point, Leo said, you know, "Where's the heart of it?" And I said, "Well, the heart is that Mollie, and Mollie and Ernest are in love."

He says, "So, maybe I should play Ernest." At which point, everything turned upside-down. And instead of from the outside-in, we were from the inside-out. And then we really got to work for another year and a half or so, even while we were shooting, on the script. And so the Bureau of Investigation would come in, and they did, and they did solve a lot of issues. And they were, you know, those were the results. You see it in the film. But primarily, it's told as much as possible from a ground level in which the Osage are there and the European American together, living together.

Q: Mr. Scorsese, Why your on-screen appearance at the very end of the film.

A:  I guess we can say this is to emphasize the veracity of the atrocities committed against the Osage.

Q:  How did the idea of you reading Mollie's obituary come up?

A: Well, the radio show was an actual show. I mean, this is Eric Roth's version of it. And it was shot after the initial shooting of the film was completed. I did it in New York, where the radio shows did take place. I was taken by the impact of the realization that all of this generations of suffering and genocide and trauma, betrayals, love, hate, all of this is reduced to a half hour piece of entertainment. And somehow, I had to find a way to make the transition of something as shocking as the radio show to bring us back to the heart of the picture. I honestly didn't know how to direct it.

And being there in New York, after coming back from Oklahoma, editing the picture a little bit, and shooting at my old high school, Cardinal Hayes High School, my wife and one of my daughters, my granddaughter out there, coming to visit and there were people there. Something hit home as I was repeating the lines, and I felt that -- mm, I felt it in an odd way too, that this is a film, and one can say it's entertainment. So in a way, we make the entertainment now, but it's on people's lives. It's on, you know, people's souls, basically, and we have to remember that and to keep it in balance. And so in a funny way, there's a culpability that I felt, but that's me.

I felt, and I thought, well, maybe after going through the readings of it, I felt secure then that I didn't have to reshoot it with another actor. But I felt also I should just take on the role. If you say, well, Marty, you like the old Westerns and they were shown this way, and the Native Americans are shown as Yes, I did like the old Westerns. Yes, I am part of the system. Yes, I am European American. And yes, I am culpable. So I think I took that on, I couldn't verbalize that as I was doing it. But when I edited it, when Thelma and I put it in, we felt it. And so I guess I put it on me.

By Maria Estévez

Correspondent writer