During the Cannes Film Festival, Konbini tells you about his favorites or looks back on the biggest events of the selection. Also see on KonbiniKillers of the Flower Moon, what is it? most anticipated of this 76th Cannes Film Festival. You have to visualize the thing: Martin Scorsese has not come to the Croisette as a candidate for the Palme since 1986 for his After Hours. Well, his new feature, 36 years later, is presented Out of Competition, but you get the idea. Especially since it’s not just any project: Killers of the Flower Moon is the first to bring the two actors together flagships of the filmmaker’s immense filmography, namely Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. A giga-production (200 million dollars all the same), which we have been talking about for literally several years, on a series of murders on a reservation of Native Americans. The anticipation was at an all-time high. The reality is that the film is not the investigation-focused thriller, but something else entirely — pure Scorsese, in fact. [On va éviter de spoiler, mais si jamais vous ne voulez pas en savoir plus, arrêtez-vous ici peut-être…]That is to say, a film that tells the story (largely true) of Ernest Burkhart, a somewhat ordinary American who will marry Millie, a native of the Osage community. A beautiful story of love and fraternity, before his uncle, adored by all, incites him to cause the death of a good part of the Amerindians… Why is it good? Besides being disconcerted by the fact not to have a thriller but a Scorsese-style gangster film, but in 1920s America and on a reservation, several things stand out. Already, the rhythm. The film is frankly long (3h24!), and has a particular structure. The love story takes almost 30 minutes to materialize, the criminal scam takes time to point the tip of its nose and the famous FBI investigation (which was to be the heart of the film at the start), only happens. ‘after roughly 2h30. We are also taken aback by this community, and this representation of Native Americans almost unprecedented in the history of cinema. Because if the genocide of the conquest of the West is often highlighted, we have rarely been able to see what the Osage community was like. Namely a population driven from its land, which finds itself in Oklahoma on land determined by the federal state and which, by the greatest of chance, finds itself to be a large oil reservoir. The new local populations will therefore succeed in taking advantage of it, and becoming “rich”. Suffice to say that it is a rare image of American cinema. Especially since this wealth will cause jealousy. How can this colonized people become almost the equal of the “white settlers”? Spoiler: the latter do not really support it, and will do everything to reverse the balance to their advantage. It is undoubtedly Scorsese’s most political film (the positioning of De Niro’s character at the end, with a phrase that we hear on a loop in the mouths of far-right pro-colonizers, is not just a small example). And in this sense, the film is chilling. Transparency during this long show, camouflaged behind a truly beautiful love story, an acerbic criticism of this masked racism, lurking in capitalist jealousy. A rather complex transcription of the violence suffered by the Osages, because they are treacherous, never as frontal as in the usual westerns. We caress you, before shooting you three times. In this sense, Scorsese pulls off a great coup. Under cover of making the two protagonists deceptively funny, the filmmaker has never liked his characters so little. They are stupid, vile, unsympathetic. And we never like them. Especially De Niro, who is terrifyingly treacherous, and who we have never seen in this register of frightening wickedness. Whereas Lily Gladstone, who embodies Mollie, is a great, very great revelation. With a game that is much more restrained than the two big names in Hollywood, where everything is played out in the eyes, in the caresses on the face, the actress impresses. But also because in the end, it is to her that Scorsese wants to pay homage. To her, and to this whole community. The end proves it in an absolutely moving gesture, but throughout, the director tells this population with a rare tenderness, where the cads aspire only to contempt. Scorsese is the filmmaker who has spent his entire career telling us how the United States has become a land of migration, built on violence and in the blood of victims. Killers of the Flower Moon could almost be the culmination of an exemplary filmography. Especially since he does it with real virtuosity – in his staging, in his casting direction, in his technical part (the sets in particular). Coming from an 80-year-old director, that’s more than impressive. So yes, it’s very long. May be too much. Yes, DiCaprio’s game can seem cartoonish at times. Yes, it is perhaps not the best film of its author. But god, even a Scorsese below remains miles above the fray. And by far. What do we remember? The actress who does well: More than the main duo, no doubt the main actress Lily Gladstone (whom we will see at the Oscars for sure) The main quality: the political statement , extremely powerfulThe main flaw: a little too long, no doubtA film that you will like if you liked: Scorsese’s filmo, and in particular Silence perhapsIt could have been called: Millie BurkhartThe quote to sum up the film: “Martin Scorsese delivers his most political film, probably the most poignant, and not far from being the most impressive.
