At The Movies: Killers Of The Flower Moon looks into the dark heart of colonialism

Killers Of The Flower Moon (PG13)

206 minutes, opens on Thursday
4 stars

The story: In Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th century, the discovery of oil on their land made the indigenous people of the Osage Nation the wealthiest in the world per capita. The influx of money into a formerly poor community creates problems, the worst being murder. Death by gunshot and poison is rampant in the community. Local businessman William Hale (Robert De Niro) is respected and liked by the Osage people, so he promises to find the perpetrators. His nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives in town, and he and Hale develop a close bond. Ernest also meets and falls in love with Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a member of the Osage community. Adapted from the 2017 true crime bestseller Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI, written by journalist David Grann.

Yes, this epic tale is almost 3½-hours long, but it is a journey worth taking.

Director Martin Scorsese has found a story that combines his two interests – awful men and religious faith.

William worships power and money. His nephew Ernest is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled.

Without giving away too much of the plot, their lives become entangled with those of the Osage indigenous community.

They are shown to be a people who have mostly stayed true to the values they carried with them from their former homeland in eastern United States, from where they were ejected by government decree in the 19th century, to be resettled on reservations in Oklahoma.

Mollie and her family, who used to be among the poorest Americans, now have servants to do their cooking, cleaning and driving.

In town, saloons and shops owned by canny white families specialise in fleecing the natives.

In other words, Scorsese offers a beautifully rendered study of European colonialism in the form of a true-crime story.

The Osage at first scratched out a living on bad farmland. After oil was discovered, merchants and traders poured in, followed by those who wanted not just money, but also the source of the money, without the natives standing in the way.

A lesser storyteller would have told the story from the point of view of the good guys, the saviours.

But Scorsese, in keeping with his style, tells it through the voices of repugnant men.

If fans root for them – as they have, for DiCaprio’s white-collar criminal Jordan Belfort in The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) or Ray Liotta’s mobster Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990) – he is simply saying that the same impulses live in all people.

Hot take: Here is the less savoury side of how the West was won – and the manner in which native peoples around the world are exploited where they live today.