---
title: Killers of the Flower Moon
type: Movie
date: 2024-02-14
author: Martin Scorsese
image: killers.webp
status: Finished
year: 2023
rating: 9
colorSortKey: [0, 27, 0]
---
 I am not a devotee of Scorsese — I have seen many but not most of his films, and I like but do not love them — and so it is perhaps a little naive to describe this film in much the same way that I think of [[Fargo (Season 5)]]: a conversation and eventual rejection of the tenets and lifeblood that constitute an artist's ouevre. [^1]

This movie is a rich text, with a runtime that demands and rewards respect (though I will find it difficult to return to it — until, perhaps, I am better armed with Scorsese's back catalog.) More than anything, though, it is a primer on evil: the ability of dim, incompetent men to wreak havoc on people to great personal gain, and the extent to which that evil can serve as a through-line for America.

Everyone is correct about Lily Gladstone being a knock-dead revelation of an actress; I have nothing novel to add.

I will be thinking about the choice to end this film with _artifice_ — an approach that I think correctly contextualizes the movie as a series of questions rather than a series of answers — for a long time. A deep and wonderful work.

★★★★★

[^1]: I think the instant rejoinder this would trigger from Scorsese devotees is that his work has _always_ remained critical and incisive of the lifestyle it depicts and in turns idolizes, which is fair! I just haven't seen enough of his work to know it.