The French Riviera experienced one of the most anticipated premieres of this year’s Cannes festival. Hollywood stars led by director Martin Scorsese walked the red carpet on Saturday evening, who presented the new film Killers of the Flower Moon. A thrilling period drama full of blood and greed shows how the Americans systematically removed the native inhabitants of the continent from power.
Tobey Maguire, known as the former representative of Spider-Man, actresses Cate Blanchett and Kirsten Dunst, singer Robbie Williams, Apple boss Tim Cook or the chief of the Osage Native American tribe did not miss the screening of the almost four-hour epic in the Grand Theater Lumière, which can accommodate 2,300 people bear.
The film was an adaptation of the bestseller book of the same name from 2017, published in Czech under the title Blood Money. It tells about a series of mysterious murders that really happened in the 20s of the last century in Oklahoma, USA, on the territory of the Osage tribe. At that time, they were among the richest in the country, as they suddenly began to receive huge revenues from the oil extracted on their lands.
The sight of money aroused the envy of the whites. The situation was further complicated by the fact that, due to racist laws, the Indians were not allowed to dispose of their own property and by law they needed to have so-called guardians, who became the whites.
The case was investigated by the FBI, then newly established by its later longest-serving director, J. Edgar Hoover. While the book focuses a lot on the birth of this secret service, Martin Scorsese’s film revolves more around the manipulations, murders and forced displacement of Indians by whites, compares the AP agency.
The 80-year-old Oscar-winning director, who has worked on the classics Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Mafia, made the film with two of his most loyal actors: Robert De Niro, who is a year younger, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who is forty-eight years old. He plays a man who has just returned from the First World War and falls in love with an Indian woman who does not know the whole truth about him. Other roles were played by Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser or John Lithgow. DiCaprio’s love interest is played by real-life Indian Lily Gladstone.
Robert De Niro a Leonardo DiCaprio ve filmu Killers of the Flower Moon. | Foto: Melinda Sue Gordon
After the premiere on Saturday, the audience rewarded the film with a nine-minute standing ovation, and the critics’ initial reactions are also positive, although some criticize the film for being too long at three and a half hours.
However, the British newspaper Guardian gave it five out of five stars. According to him, the news has echoes of Scorsese’s female gangsters when it talks about organized violence, loyalty and the inevitable selling out to an establishment that turns out to be corrupt. “But in the end, this film is about what all westerns, and by extension all of history, are about: a brutal campaign to gain territory, resources and power,” summarizes the Guardian.
Indiewire.com also sees a similarity between Scorsese’s female gangsters and the new film, which is full of violence and bitter insights. The story captures the moment when the American 20th century was born on the last remnants of the Wild West era, and focuses on greedy people who want to control absolutely everything. At the same time, the film focuses on a strong love story between a member of the Osage tribe and a white man, in whose role Leonardo DiCaprio gives “the best performance of his career”, wrote the website. Killers of the Flower Moon is Scorsese’s sixth film with DiCaprio.
The director was in contact with Osedži during the filming. Members of their names were portrayed by 44 real Osage people. Where the crew could not find a suitable one, another American Indian was cast, the production company said.
“We shot in Oklahoma. There were a lot of pastures and wild horses. As a New Yorker, I’m not used to that,” Scorsese said after Saturday’s premiere. “We lived in the same world with Osedži. Today I miss it,” he added. The crew worked despite the intense heat, often right at the locations where the crimes actually took place.
According to AFP, the script took many forms and underwent changes until the eve of filming. At one point, Scorsese and DiCaprio, after intensive consultation with the Osage, decided to focus more on “how some white people could do to the Osage what they did to them” and how they themselves justified violence against defenseless people and those they loved, Scorsese said. The film captures a forgotten chapter of American history, DiCaprio added.
The film Killers of the Flower Moon will be released in Czech cinemas on October 19. | Video: CinemArt
The film premiered in Cannes out of competition, although festival director Thierry Fremaux, according to his own words, offered Scorsese the opportunity to compete for the main prize, the Palme d’Or.
The picture for 200 million dollars, converted to almost 4.4 billion crowns, was originally produced by Apple for its Apple TV+ video library. But in the end, she agreed to show it in theaters before the online premiere. This also applies to Czech cinemas that will release Killers of the Flower Moon on October 19.
