Is love truly blind? Exploring love, murder and betrayal in 'Killers of the Flower Moon'
The H in my name stands for hyper-analyzing. Let's dive into the visual analysis of one of the movie's stills.
Imagine being a wealthy Osage woman living in the early twentieth century, with the only void in your life being the absence of love. You then meet a man who you fall head over heels for, only for him to attempt to poison you to death, and organize the slaughter of your kin and community. Referred to as the 'Osage Reign of Terror', this is the real-life story of Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) and husband-turned-persecutor Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio); subjects of Martin Scorsese’s latest picture Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
The film focuses on the insidious practice of white men courting Osage women into marriage, with the bloodthirsty goal of earning their oil wealth. Although this artwork does talk as an audiovisual piece, the subliminal message of the movie is how unpredictable yet inevitable the emergence of genocide can be, specifically on the marginalized’s side. Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth showed us a perspective that we rarely get to see from such horrible events: one of one-sided trust, and love. Mollie’s affection for her husband blinded her from his lust for riches, and proved that one must extend their hand to the predator to first get bitten. Through a specific still of the movie, we can observe that had she not been enamoured of the precursor of the murders, his motives were never hidden, but in her face, all along.
“Because marriage to an American Indian woman would historically give her husband control over her property, many white men have seen American Indian women themselves as resources to be commoditized when oil or other valuable resources are discovered on Indian land. [...] When oil was discovered on that [Osage] land in 1897, the tribe became, per capita, the wealthiest group of people in the world. Then, in 1921, the murders began.”—Ana Condes via Law Review.
Amidst the semblance of joy that typically characterizes a wedding reception, here, in the movie still above, the overpowering force of greed eclipses love. It may not seem evident; in the foreground, we see three cheerful-looking characters, now united by the bonds of marriage. But the real matter is what they are being cheerful about.
The top of their heads forms an ascension where Ernest embodies its zenith, and starting from the lowest point, our eyes meet Mollie. Smiling, the bride ignores her guests to stare at her husband with a loving gaze. With eyes raised above as one does when hoping, she looks at Ernest and the potentially beautiful story awaiting them. In contrast, Ernest ignores his bride to look ahead; not with a smile on his face, but a smirk in triumph, standing before the wealthy community he just joined by law, and the in-laws he is plotting to kill. The squint of his eyes signals that he’s adjusting his focus to look onward; at the vast landscape of Osage County, whilst daydreaming of his soon-to-be empire.
Represented solely by the direction of their gaze, Mollie’s selflessness and Ernest’s greediness embody the dichotomy of their motives. A duality that even the medicine of time can’t heal: between them stands what will forever prevent their love from sincerity; white supremacy and racism.
Some may credit marrying their spouse to serendipity, but it wasn’t the case for Mollie and Ernest: their marriage was orchestrated by the ‘King of the Osage Hills’. Otherwise called William King Hale (Robert De Niro), the man we see standing in between the newlyweds is Ernest’s uncle, one of the few white businessmen living on the former Osage Reservation. Although ‘friend’ of the Osage, he was the mastermind behind the scheme; when Ernest initially planned to live with him, Hale pivoted his nephew’s fate by urging him to marry Mollie, plan the deaths of her family members, to then poison her and inherit her headrights. Him looking ahead just as his nephew then makes total sense; his wide smile and raised eyebrows reveals a withheld excitement and disbelief, being one step closer to their ulterior goal— the marriage never being about the couple’s union, but their soon-to-be empire.
In the background (of said still), the green leaves of a tree frames Hale and Ernest as a team, and Mollie as one. Segregating whiteness from Indigenousness, her traditional embroidered wedding coat from the white men’s uniform, said tree represents the roots of “a colonial America hinging on and enforced by white supremacy underpinnings.” Associated with violence and aggression, the blood-like red adorning the men’s ties hints at the blood they’ll take of the Osage people; hence why the Osage bride is wearing the most red, later victim of said aggression.
Behind her shoulder stands in the distance another white man observing the scene. Looking at Hale and Burkhart and not Mollie, the direction of his gaze also symbolizes motives, not his personal ones, but of the entire body of men commanded by King and Ernest, benefiting from the killings of the Osage people. Expressing the brightest smile out of the three main characters, this guest illustrates the complicity of white settler men in the crimes, and the delights emerging from it.
But Mollie, out of naïveté and actual desire to marry Burkhart, could not even see what was coming. Without the rose-colored glasses of love, the greediness of her husband and uncle-in-law was never hidden, and shows “[...] how whiteness exploits so-called love as a way to inflict unexplainable, unfathomable harm and destruction.”
From blood-soaked ties to the sinister smirk etched on Ernest's face, every detail serves as a reminder of the atrocities committed against the Osage people and the complicity of those who stood idly by. I found Gladstone’s Academy-nominated performance gut-wrenching, though I would’ve appreciated a more poignant arc for the character. I wish we would’ve seen more rage or reaction towards her husband when she found out, when recovered, that he was the master behind it all.
Perhaps, her absence of emotions intended to reveal the numbness caused by the warning signs limerence tends to blur, often gone unnoticed until it is too late. Thus, Killers of the Flower Moon reinforces the necessity that it is our duty to ensure that such horrors are never forgotten.