“Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone says Martin Scorsese‘s film is more complicated than your traditional Western, where Indigenous characters have historically suffered stereotyping.
The Blackfeet/Niimíipuu actress, who portrays Osage woman Mollie Burkhart in the period piece film, told Empire magazine, “A lot of people are really wanting to call this ‘Martin Scorsese’s Western.’ With natives and Westerns, we are so dehumanized that it just kind of feels like we’re part of the landscape – instead of humans that are telling a story.”
She added that the film is instead “a great American tragedy.” Gladstone’s character is wed to suspicious cattle rancher Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro) is determined to gain control over the oil under their feet in Oklahoma.
“Having grown up on my reservation in Montana, in the American West and Indian country, it was very familiar to see this goofy, exaggerated cowboy sort of a character falling for a really self-possessed native woman,” Gladstone said of the dynamic with DiCaprio’s character. “That’s just such a familiar dynamic. And that was backed up by a lot of community stories that we had heard.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” debuted at 2023 Cannes and co-stars Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, and Brendan Fraser. The film is based on David Grann’s nonfiction book about the series of murders in Osage County, Oklahoma, during the 1920s after oil was discovered on Osage Nation Indigenous land. The newly formed FBI investigated the cases at the time.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” will be premiering in IMAX with a limited release on Friday, October 6, before opening wide on Friday, October 20. Apple Original Films has not yet set a streaming premiere.
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