Killers of the Flower Moon: A Prayer from the Abyss

One summer, when I must have been around seven years old, my grandmother told me a story about a wealthy Native American family. It was during the annual road trip that we would make, from Arizona through western Oklahoma’s sea of grass, to a reunion of the side of my family that hails from the Kiowa Tribe. The family she described were so incredibly rich, they lived in a mansion, owned luxury cars, and even employed white servants. The image was utterly bewildering, like something out of an alternate reality. I asked if they were part of our tribe, but she said they were not; they were Osage, from the other side of the state. I never asked how she knew about them or what became of them, and this lingering story from my childhood only gained clarity years later, when I learned of the Osage people’s history, and again in 2017, when it was announced that Martin Scorsese would be adapting David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

In his meticulously researched book, Grann details the calculated genocide of Osage tribal members in eastern Oklahoma during the 1920s. Driven by the Osage Nation’s oil wealth, white settlers orchestrated what was later called a “Reign of Terror”—a slew of murders by way of poisoning, bombing, and shooting—to seize oil headrights. Grann frames the narrative around the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation’s inquiry, shifting focus from the perpetrators’ identities to the systemic conspiracy, the pervasive guilt, and the frustrating pursuit of justice. The murders are highlighted as an institutional failure, yet the Osage narrative was distinct among Native American tribes because the tormentors did face prosecution, even if some ultimately evaded justice.

Scorsese’s decision to adapt this monumental book—and, critically, his willingness to confront one of America’s foundational sins, the genocide of its Indigenous people—presented an opportunity for a vital cultural moment and marked a novel direction in a career then spanning forty-two features. Given his stature, the project was uniquely positioned to achieve a scale and an audience that few, if any, other filmmakers at that time could have commanded. As a longtime admirer of the iconic director’s work, I was undeniably intrigued by the prospect; yet, as a Native person navigating an America demanding to be made great again, I felt some personal apprehension stirred up by the endeavor.

My initial concern about the film, announced during Donald Trump’s politically charged first term as president, stemmed from the turbulence in Indian Country that had erupted since his election in 2016. This era kicked off with the forced ending by the National Guard of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, the weaponization of “Pocahontas” as a slur, the banning of books on Indigenous history, the increased scrutiny of racist sports-team names, and the alarming rates of violence against Native American women, often by non-Indigenous perpetrators, finally receiving national attention. I was not concerned about Scorsese’s aims, nor about his collaborations with Indigenous artists like Robbie Robertson or the Osage themselves, but rather about how non-Native audiences would react to this depiction of historical violence. Would it inspire a meaningful reevaluation of the United States’ treatment of Native peoples, or would provocateurs distort and weaponize it? Those fears were ultimately put to rest when I eventually experienced Scorsese’s dark epic—most prominently by its astonishing coda and final shot.

Undoubtedly, as a prolific student of cinema history, Scorsese went into this production aware of the medium’s troubled past with regard to Indigenous communities—defined by extractive practices, the reinforcement of damaging stereotypes, and the eclipsing of real, historical suffering for the sake of entertainment. Careful to avoid these pitfalls, he approached this adaptation through direct engagement and collaboration with the Osage themselves, an interaction that resulted in a fundamental shift in the story’s vantage point. Instead of Grann’s FBI-procedural narrative, Killers of the Flower Moon would be reoriented to focus primarily on the perspective of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and, secondarily, on that of his Osage wife, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone). This reshaping exposes Ernest’s role in the genocide orchestrated by his uncle, local Southern-gentleman autocrat William King Hale (Robert De Niro), and allows the audience to observe the deterioration of Ernest’s marriage to Mollie as he slowly poisons her while eliminating members of her family and tribe. And it bolsters Scorsese’s meticulous examination of societal guilt, allowing him to scrutinize more closely every facet of how such heinous acts were able to unfold so brazenly.

While analyses often connect the spiritual themes in Scorsese’s films to his Catholic faith and his early aspiration to the priesthood, they frequently overlook that his filmmaking itself can function as an act of worship or intercessory prayer. Scorsese’s earlier films often present parables of sinners: prodigal-son types whose rises and falls are marked by either finding a semblance of salvation or being consumed by their trespasses. Examples include Jake La Motta hitting rock bottom in Raging Bull (1980), Henry Hill’s nosedive in Goodfellas (1990), and Sam “Ace” Rothstein stacking the odds against himself in Casino (1995). However, a major shift has occurred as of late in his body of work. From Silence (2016) and The Irishman (2019) to Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Scorsese’s narrative focus has noticeably flipped from explorations of the sinner’s journey to jeremiads on the fundamental nature of sin itself, a change perhaps signaled by his increasingly winding run times (161, 209, and 206 minutes, respectively). From this perspective, one could read Silence as examining the self-destruction inflicted by sin, The Irishman as grieving the damage it does to those we love, and Killers of the Flower Moon as observing the gulf it creates between us. As if on his own road to Damascus, Scorsese has been turning increasingly inward, knowingly pondering questions that may not have answers on this side of heaven.

Scorsese’s depiction of the crimes against the Osage becomes a search for decency within an increasingly morally bankrupt world. He struggles to fully grasp the perpetrators’ boundless evil, suggesting a darkness too profound for even his lens. Potentially as a balm, Scorsese frequently turns to the Osage, consistently finding moments of light in their spiritual and communal life. Through the character of Mollie, the Osage are portrayed as living for values beyond individual self-interest, ones rooted in traditions, spiritual practices, and strong social bonds. Mollie, the film’s only explicitly Christian (specifically Catholic) character, serves as a moral anchor, bridging Osage and Christian spiritual worlds through her church attendance and mourning rites.

Mollie’s internal duality also mirrors the historical reality of Osage syncretism, which flourished during the tribe’s oil boom. Following their forced removal to Oklahoma, the Osage resisted total cultural assimilation by forging a distinct, hybrid spiritual identity, despite the efforts of missionaries to assimilate them. This was achieved by integrating Christian elements—such as equating the Christian God with the Osage Great Spirit (Wakonda)—while steadfastly maintaining their core beliefs and ceremonial life. Mollie’s practice of engaging with both Indigenous rites and Catholic services is a direct example of this blending. These are not only acts of faith but acts of survival and resistance.

Scorsese portrays Mollie as a figure of moral purity—an Indigenous Madonna enduring the suffering and violence inflicted upon her people. She embodies a natural and spiritual path forward, potentially even representing a hopeful future for the very concept of America’s soul. Her and her people’s blended spirituality—from the pipe burial to her mother, Lizzie Q, meeting with the ancestors after her death—presents the only spiritual certainty outside of the evil inflicted upon them. As the film’s moral compass, Mollie establishes a stark contrast to the more sinister characters, one most evident in her final exchange with Ernest. Following her recovery from being poisoned by him, she confronts her husband in the courthouse after he testifies against Hale’s involvement in the murders. Mollie demands that he confess his deeds, and yet, in a final, craven denial, he refuses: a potent metaphor for the original people of this land demanding that those who wronged them finally acknowledge the undeniable. Ernest’s fate—and, for Scorsese, the fate of all those who fail to admit their complicity in the United States’ sins—is sealed in damnation. The scene fades hauntingly to black.

We’re left to linger in the darkness and to sit with the weight of the irrefutable. It’s a logically bleak conclusion to witnessing over three hours of human depravity at its most brazen. Then, in an initially bewildering transition, Scorsese turns the film in on itself. The abyss is pierced by lights as Killers of the Flower Moon cuts to a packed house seated for a live broadcast of the Lucky Strike–sponsored radio show True Crime Stories. The year is somewhere in the late thirties, nearly a decade from where the film left Mollie and Ernest, and an all-white ensemble dramatically reenacts an abridged version of the preceding narrative of the “Osage Indian murders,” augmented by performed sound effects and a bandleader. The segment concludes with the players reading the fates of those involved in the murders and their eventual evasion of justice, before the show’s producer (played by Scorsese himself) steps up to the microphone to read Mollie’s 1937 obituary. He speaks somberly and observes that it conspicuously omits any mention of the killings.

This moment represents Scorsese’s ultimate scrutiny of his own endeavor to reconstruct this history through a form of popular entertainment. He turns his lens on himself, questioning his proximity to these ills and—as suggested by the absence of any Indigenous presence onstage—even the limits of his own perspective as a non-Indigenous artist. It’s also an acknowledgment of the boundaries and limitations of the medium, definitively situating both author and audience within an extension of a bleak historical chapter and prompting reflection on their shared culpability. In response to Ernest’s refusal to admit transgressions, the director acknowledges his own complicity by entering his film quite literally, seeking a path forward through simple admission. He offers an actionable route for all tied to the country’s foundational sin, presenting a choice and leading by example. Killers of the Flower Moon thus transcends the historical epic, reshaping it into a Möbius strip that blurs audience, film, and director.

Killers of the Flower Moon: A Prayer from the Abyss

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