The way Native Americans were treated in the centuries after the colonization of America by Europeans “remains a wound to heal,” Martin Scorsese told AFP in May in Cannes, where Killers of the Flower was presented Moon. This film, in theaters this week, takes up Scorsese’s classic themes, a story of violence, criminals and love, but it is also perhaps one of the director’s most political. It describes how white men dispossessed members of a Native American people, the Osage, on whose lands oil was found during the 1920s.
“Maybe by knowing our history and understanding where we are, we can make a difference and live up to what our country is supposed to be,” the American filmmaker told AFP during the presentation of the film out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
While the plot is set in 1920s Oklahoma, Scorsese believes that the violence and crimes depicted could just as easily take place today. Even if he takes care to specify that it is not a “message film” which would only speak to the convinced and “diverge from the humanity” of the characters.
“I don’t think it’s a period film. The questions are the same as today. I hope that democracy will survive although it is sometimes very fractured. But the country is still young, it still suffers from its youthful wounds. This film is a way of recognizing that at least,” says the director.
Scorsese admits to having long dreamed of making a western, a style of film which reached its peak “in the 20th century and which has disappeared today”. “I loved westerns, they reflect who we were at the time and who we still are, in certain respects,” continues the filmmaker.
Killers of The Flower Moon plays with this genre, flipping the camps of good and evil with its cowboy arriving in town to play an extremely murky role. His regret? The film takes place during Prohibition, in a state where the consumption of alcohol was prohibited by law: “I always imagined going to a saloon or a bar, I could have made big scenes (in these places ). But it didn’t exist at the time.
