I am of the opinion that the films by Martin Scorsese just aren't that good. While I agree with his stance on the superhero genre, I also feel that Scorsese's own creations are effectively the same film recreated with a different colour of glitter thrown over them. I haven't watched the majority of his recent titles and I don't feel I will do so anytime soon, if ever. Though Killers of the Flower Moon has somehow managed to make quite a name for itself at the Oscars recently. Such praise and discussion was something I just couldn't continue to ignore. It was also heavily advertised to me on Apple TV+, which I've been trying to use as it comes up to the final month of my three free months of use. I won't be renewing that, that's for sure. Moving on though, I had high hopes for this film. I had the assumption that things might be different this time. I am quite disappointed, however. Killers of the Flower Moon was precisely what Scorsese does. The same idea just under a different setting. With the same actors that I'm just truthfully tired of.
It isn't that I dislike these actors in general, but that their endless repetition alongside Scorsese just bores me. Though I will also quickly throw out that both Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio have heavily fallen off with age. Both of their performances have grown weak, uninteresting. Lets not forget that one period of family films that DeNiro was throwing out seemingly by the week as well! So it was hard for me to stay engaged here with Killers of the Flower Moon. I'm a firm enjoyer of films in which I have likely never heard of the cast before, where I have no prior titles witnessed that I can attach them to. I don't see them as an actor that's A List, nor do I see them as their most famous roles a decade ago, instead with a cast of unknowns, they're as authentic to those characters as you could guess. So, Killers of the Flower Moon almost immediately didn't feel like it was new. It felt samey, and the instant "Oh there's DiCaprio again, and there's DeNiro, again." was felt. I tried to stick with it though.
This post won't contain major spoilers but will contain some mentions of the film's narrative and characters to some degree. This is just my general usual warning to those who may want to watch before reading on.
Killers of the Flower Moon
With the recent remarks from Scorsese about the state of the film industry, I can't help but feel he's part of the problem without really knowing. One of my first issues with Killers of the Flower Moon was its very heavy use of special effects for its backgrounds. There are plenty of opportunities to film on locations in remote areas, and it certainly isn't much of a cost issue in comparison to hiring the VFX teams. It pulled me out of the immersion immediately with the fact that these effects were used from the very start. Opening scenes are meant to be powerful, either emotionally or visually. Something to set up the story and pull in the audience. The idea is there: a western setting with our protagonist arriving by train in a remote part of America, where settlers are manipulating the natives and pursuing financial interest. For depth and setting, this is where we would want to see something real. But we don't. It is all blatantly fake.
Another problem I had with the film was that a lot of the colours didn't seem natural. There was a clear set of colour grading over the whole film that just seemed far too digital. A lot of this was down to the film having very little light to it for its interiors, looking dark and just a bit off. The exterior shots with the aforementioned special effects had a similar feeling to them, just colours that didn't seem real. More a result of post production than anything else. For me it was a bit distracting, I just couldn't get into it when everything seemed so false. And it is a shame, because the directing in parts can look very beautiful. Certain compositions do seem well thought-out, They don't pertain too much to that typical western look, aside from the use of wide angle lenses and a very anamorphic look sometimes. There were parts in which I did feel like I enjoyed what I saw, I just at the same time started to feel as if it could've looked more appealing if done different.
Scorcese has been doing this for a while now, his prior recent films have a similar look to them. Sometimes as if the lens was slightly smeared with grease and the colours a little too dark in tone. It's really just not my thing. A very manufactured look to everything doesn't appeal to me. And I even get that feeling with the actors, as mentioned above. The same main cast just doesn't really speak to me, it doesn't feel like a film, like a story is being told. And I can't blame them for wanting to come together and work with each other, as filmmakers it makes sense that you'd want to work closely with friends and long-established colleagues. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but again, for me? I just can't get over it. A problem with this is how much it impacts the story for me, how that immersion is thrown out of the window.
Killers of the Flower Moon holds a narrative that isn't too unique to the western genre, albeit a little less shooty than what you may think of when you read the word western. It's not like your typical Clint Eastwood film; instead it focuses more on the political and crime side of things in the era of the wild west, in which greed began to run rampant and wealth distribution took place at the thirst for opportunity and land. It is a film with a story that shows how a select group of individuals sought to milk the land dry of its resources and profit heavily, while shutting up any backlash that may have appeared from those who were native to the area. It's a little more different to most western films, but I guess one could put it as a more political, longer and more boring version of There Will Be Blood, in its idea of settlers appearing and pursuing wealth at the expense and manipulation of others.
The idea is there, it's an area that I think doesn't hold a lot of potential in regards to originality, but that's fine. The problem again falls back on the familiar actors that show up, the faces that aren't unique to this space and environment. Instead they all look too clean, too normal. Not all that believable to this space. In a way that can work when you're trying to paint the idea of a villain, how anyone with any face could be untrustworthy and have their own agenda. The issue here is that I just don't think that's the case, I don't think this is a smart enough production that is trying to say something like that. It isn't trying to go the extra mile beyond the idea that the new settlers are just corrupt and stealing from the natives.
Add in the incredibly long runtime of over three hours, and Killers of the Flower Moon is a bit of a slog to get through. I had to pause it here and there and put my attention elsewhere for a while, to sort of refresh my brain a bit as I noticed I was just losing interest and drifting off a bit. I don't think this is a film that needs to be so long, yet this is again nothing out of the ordinary for Scorsese, who pretty much insists on boring you to death as he wastes your time with something that could've been much better and over with half the time used. There's this weird idea that long films means it's a good film, that the idea of the modern blockbuster is whatever is of the longest length. That just isn't the case, and this is a film that shows that no matter how much budget you have, who you have in the film, or who directs it, it can still be a huge mess that gets circlejerked into popularity. I'd say skip it, do something better with your time. Watch something shorter, more interesting. Go check out something unique on Mubi, for example. Don't waste nearly four hours of your life on this like I did.
