Friday reviews: 20 October 2023

Killers of the Flower Moon is in cinemas and The Burial is on Prime Video

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

I’m not a stu­dent of scrip­ture by any means but that was the verse that kept com­ing back to me watch­ing Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. In fact, that verse could apply to almost any of Scorsese’s pic­tures. What hap­pens when worldly tempta­tion presents itself and then the oth­er side of the bar­gain has to be met?

Leonardo DiCaprio is – and I use the word “is” advisedly, he inhab­its this role so com­pletely – is Ernest Burkhart, an undis­tin­guished vet­er­an of World War One who comes to Oklahoma on a prom­ise of some work from his uncle, a wealthy ranch­er named William King Hale (Robert De Niro).

Ernest is not the sharpest tool in the toolshed. He is, how you might say, sug­gest­ible. And when the mis­sion of every white man in the town of Fairfax is only to sep­ar­ate the newly oil rich Native American Osage people from their money that’s the sug­ges­tion that he takes on board.

Early on, Ernest says, “I do like me some of that money” and you know instantly that this will be the cause of his down­fall. When people tell you who they are, believe them.

So, promp­ted by his uncle, Ernest woos and then mar­ries an Osage woman named Molly (Lily Gladstone) with the inten­tion of even­tu­ally get­ting ‘head rights’ to her share of the oil that’s gush­ing freely all around them.

But his capa­city for self-deception is such that after telling him­self that he is in love with her, in his mind (and hers) he makes it true. Even when he is doing ter­rible things to her, her fam­ily and her people.

The rela­tion­ship between Ernest and Molly is cent­ral to the deep­est themes of the film – how can a love born of such shock­ing beha­viour endure at all? And can a sin­ner that does not know his sin ever find redemption?

It’s a huge film – three hours and twenty – and there are so many ways in. I sus­pect we will be read­ing insight­ful takes on it for years to come.

As reg­u­lar read­ers will know, I don’t like writ­ing long.

I want to give you an idea of how a film made me feel while watch­ing it but I try and avoid exten­ded plot sum­mar­ies (and there’s way too much to sum­mar­ise here in any case).

Suffice here to say that pair­ing a story of per­son­al spir­itu­al cor­rup­tion and that corruption’s undeni­able con­nec­tion to America’s first great found­ing stain, as well as the inex­or­able mor­al fail­ure of our cur­rent one – cap­it­al­ism – makes Killers of the Flower Moon one of the most pro­found cinema exper­i­ences of this cen­tury so far.

And the end­ing gave me a kick in the guts like noth­ing has since Schindler’s List. Virtuoso stuff.

And Scorsese at 80 is also bring­ing out the best in his collaborators.

De Niro is more engaged than I have seen him in years, the design­ers Jack Fisk (Production) and Jacqueline West (Costume) are oper­at­ing on an extraordin­ary level … and then there’s the music.

The film opens with an exten­ded scene-setting sequence with some won­der­ful sound­ing rootsy Americana music and it’s a few minutes in before you real­ise, oh, it’s Robbie Robertson.

It’s fit­ting that his last col­lab­or­a­tion with Scorsese should be his finest.

If three and a half hours feels like a long time to you, or maybe you just don’t want to leave the house this week­end, you can get some of those themes addressed in Maggie Betts’ The Burial on Prime Video.

Not as deeply or as suc­cess­fully, you under­stand, but it tries to tra­verse sim­il­ar ter­rit­ory – the scourge of cap­it­al­ism and the neces­sity to dehu­man­ise its par­ti­cipants, racial injustice, the scars of his­tor­ic trauma lying hid­den from view.

Tommy Lee Jones is a Mississippi funer­al dir­ect­or des­per­ate to leave the chain of funer­al homes that he inher­ited from his fath­er to his own chil­dren. Disrespected by a giant Canadian funer­al con­glom­er­ate in an uncon­sum­mated busi­ness deal, he employs showy per­son­al injury law­yer Jamie Foxx to give them what for.

It seems like a futile mis­sion but Fox’s char­ac­ter Willie Gary does not like to lose.

Based loosely on real events, the film does an excel­lent job of recre­at­ing mid-90s hair, cloth­ing and attitudes.

Foxx turns on all the movie star charm he pos­sesses – which is a lot – and former alpha dog Jones (at 77) knows when to give him the floor.

Prime Video is mak­ing an excel­lent habit of show­cas­ing black stor­ies and black cre­at­ors and The Burial is anoth­er good example. It’s got a feel-good factor that I was ready to dis­miss early on, but then it digs a little deep­er and is all the bet­ter for it.

Further reading

My pre­view of the British and Irish Film Festival (in Aotearoa) made it through sub­bing at RNZ and is up on the web­site. The fest­iv­al runs from now until 1 November in 24 cinemas in 15 towns around the coun­try. It’s an excel­lent programme.

Further listening

My jour­ney through the Australian out­back and the many hor­ror and thrill­er movies that have been set there took an inter­est­ing turn yes­ter­day when I got a call from ABC Radio in Darwin (Northern Territory). Was a fun con­ver­sa­tion (from about the five minute mark on this link) but I couldn’t help but notice the irony of a crit­ic in New Zealand writ­ing an art­icle about Australia for a British web­site is now con­sidered an expert on the subject.

Reminder

This is the last of the Friday reviews that will be avail­able in full to free sub­scribers. After Labour Weekend, ori­gin­al mater­i­al will be behind the paywall.

One of the ways you can sup­port F&S – and save a few quid at the same time – is to intro­duce it to your friends. Every new sign-up helps and the top ‘recom­mend­er’ every month gets a prize.

Monday is a pub­lic hol­i­day in Aotearoa New Zealand so there will be no 3.15pm update. Normal ser­vice resumes on Tuesday.