KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: 4 STARS
Greed and murder are not new themes in the work of Martin Scorsese, but the effects of those capital sins have never been more darkly devastating than they are in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
A study in the banality of evil, the story, loosely based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name, is set in 1920s Oklahoma, a time of an oil rush on land owned by the Osage Nation. The discovery of black gold made the Indigenous Nation the richest people per capita on Earth. With wealth came an influx of white interlopers, “like buzzards circling our people.”
Among them is William King Hale (Robert De Niro), a seemingly respectable Osage County power broker. He speaks the area’s Indigenous language and publicly supports the Osage community, but, as we find out, it is his insidious and deadly dealings with his Indigenous Osage neighbors that filled his bank account. “Call me King,” he says unironically.
When his nephew and World War I vet Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives, looking to start a new life, Hale brings him into a years long con to defraud the Osage people through marriage scams and murder by setting up a connection between Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a wealthy Osage woman, and Ernest.
“He’s not that smart,” says Mollie, “but he’s handsome. He looks like a coyote. Those blue eyes.”
Mollie sees through the overture, noting, “Coyote wants money,” during their first dinner, but despite the economic angle, the pair marry, making Ernest an heir to her fortune if something should happen to her.
That economic element lies at the dark heart of Hale’s plan. He orchestrates matches between the monied Osage mothers, sisters and daughters with carefully chosen white men, who exploit them, murder them, and siphon off the oil money from their estates.
This reign of terror claims the lives of more than two dozen Osage women, attracting the attention of the newly formed Bureau of Investigation agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and his crew.
The murderous real-life scheme behind “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the most depraved crime and villain Scorsese has ever essayed on film.
The wholesale murder for money is driven not just by greed, but also by white supremacy, oppression of culture and a diabolical disregard for human life. It is pure evil, manipulated by Hale, played by De Niro as the smiling face of doom.
De Niro has played dastardly characters before, but he’s never been this vile. And this is an actor who played The Devil in “Angel Heart.”
The thing that makes Hale truly treacherous and morally irredeemable is the way he insinuates himself into the lives of the very people he was exploiting and having murdered. He is a master manipulator, who will shake his victim’s hand while using his other hand to stab them in the back, and De Niro’s embodiment of him is skin crawling.
“This wealth should come to us,” he says, “Their time is over. It’s just going to be another tragedy.”
As Ernest, DiCaprio goes along with the plan, but, unlike his uncle, has a hint of a conscience even as he does horrible things. He’s a weak person, torn between love for his wife and his uncle’s plan to eliminate her and her family.
The centre of the story is Mollie, played with quiet grace by Gladstone. Although she disappears from the screen for long periods of time, it is her presence that provides the film with much needed heart and soul. She is strong in the face of illness and betrayal, but her stoicism portrays a complexity of emotion as her family members are murdered and her own life is endangered. Mollie is as spiritual as Hale is immoral, and that balance is the film’s underpinning.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” earns its three-and-a-half hour runtime with a classically made, multiple-perspective slow burn of a crime story that sheds light on, and condemns, the brutal treatment of Indigenous people.
ANATOMY OF A FALL: 3 ½ STARS
A look at a strained marriage through the lens of a public murder trial, “Anatomy of a Fall,” the Palme D’Or-winning film now playing in theatres, is more concerned with human drama than the procedural aspects of the story. The result is a complex look at the search for truth in relationships and justice in court.
Set at a remote country residence in the Swiss Alps, home to best-selling writer Sandra (Sandra Hüller), her less-successful writer husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) and their visually impaired 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). When Samuel is found dead outside the home, a pool of blood surrounding his head like a halo, questions arise.
Was it suicide or murder? Did he fall from an upstairs window, or was he pushed?
Sandra’s muted response to her husband’s death raises eyebrows, and soon suspicion leads to murder charges. In court, her compassionate defense lawyer Vincent (Swann Arlaud), a man she once had an affair with, is pitted against a confrontational state prosecutor played by Antoine Reinartz in a trial that puts Sandra and Samuel’s complicated lives on display.
“Anatomy of a Fall” is not a “Law & Order” style procedural. As director Justine Triet moves through the story, the courtroom framework becomes a backdrop for a captivating study of human behavior.
At the film’s stone-cold heart is Hüller. In her hands, Sandra is a compelling and complex person who confronts the usual courtroom trope of widowed wife as a sympathetic character. Her independence, powerful presence and chilly demeanor, broken by the occasional emotional outburst, stares down preconceived notions and subconscious prejudices about Sandra’s life and behavior.
Triet isn’t asking if Sandra is guilty or not. She is more interested in why we, as the observer, might pass judgment on the character, one way or another. Placing the onus of judgment on the viewer is a fascinating way to subvert the procedural genre.
At 2 hours and 30 minutes “Anatomy of a Fall” may test some viewer’s attention spans as it slowly layers detail upon detail, both procedurally and personally, but for patient audiences it offers up an interesting mystery and an opportunity to examine personal biases.
THE PIGEON TUNNEL: 4 STARS
“The Pigeon Tunnel,” a new documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris, now streaming on Apple TV+, is a look at the extraordinary life of David Cornwell a.k.a. prolific author John le Carré. Through a retelling of his life, Cornwell examines the very essence of truth, and how memory and manipulation play a part in how we shape our world and our perceptions.
The set-up is simple, the story is not. Morris, who does not appear on camera, allows Cornwell/le Carré, a leisurely 90 minutes to tell the story of his astonishing life. Dressed in an elegant blue businessman’s suit, he looks every inch the erudite MI6 intelligence officer he actually was from 1960 until 1964 when his career was cut short by the betrayal of double agent Kim Philby.
In measured tones, he eloquently describes a childhood that initially seems at odds with the sophisticated man seen in front of the camera. The son of Ronnie Cornwell, a career criminal and con man, says, “reality did not exist in my childhood. Performance did.”
And what follows is a performance of a sort. One that does not rely on truth as a cornerstone.
Early on, Ronnie schooled his son in the ways of duplicity, training that came in handy in his future careers as a raconteur, spy and a novelist. Cornwell/le Carré, who died in 2020 shortly after the interviews for this film were completed, was a master fabulist, a storyteller who created a persona for himself in addition to the characters he created for his novels. He admits that much of what he says in the film isn’t true, that his recollections have been manipulated by the vagaries of memory and the trauma of youth.
A “long family background of betrayal,” from his father’s transgressions, his mother’s abandonment and later life changing disloyalty from his friend Philby, shaped him, and that is at the heart of what Morris wants the film to illuminate.
On the surface, it’s a look at an extraordinary life. But beyond the well-told stories, the real insight comes with how he sees the world. It doesn’t matter if the biographical details are true or not, what matters is his perception. It is how David Cornwell sees himself that is important and revealing.
“I see my own life as a series of embraces and escapes,” he says.
“The Pigeon Tunnel” is as compelling as any le Carré novel. Cornwell/le Carré knows how to tell a tale, and like any good spy, he knows what details to include, and which to hide away. Morris doesn’t attempt to chip away at the façade and get at the underlying truth, because he knows, in the hands of master storyteller, a good story is a good story, whether it is true or not.
DICKS: THE MUSICAL: 2 STARS
Were it not for the explicit language, X-rated songs and a pair of monstrous puppets called The Sewer Boys, “Dicks: The Musical,” a raunchy new movie now playing in theatres, could have been a 1960s sitcom style family comedy about a pair of twins who conspire to get their estranged parents back together.
Instead, it’s a no-holds-barred ode to the likes of John Waters, attempting to find that sweet spot between shock and awe.
Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson are Craig and Aaron, two high-powered salespeople who meet for the first time when their company Vroomba! merges their two offices into one. They’re alpha males, sharks in tight suits and ultracompetitive, but one musical number later, they realize they share a birthday, looks and goals. They are long separated twins, one raised by their mother Evelyn (Megan Mullally), the other by father Harris (Nathan Lane). They concoct a plan to be a family again, to bring their parents back together, despite the fact that Evelyn keeps her winged genitals (you read that right) in a purse and Harris is gay and keeps The Sewer Boys, two toxic creatures he found in the NYC sewer, in a cage as his children.
“We didn’t realize being lied to your entire lives would be so upsetting,” says Harris.
Cue a barrage of crude jokes and a series of show tunes with double entendre titles like, “I’ll Always Be on Top” and "Love in All Its Forms” (“All love is gross/But all love is love”) as this unconventional family discovers how to love again.
Originated as a two-hander theatre piece by Upright Citizens Brigade members Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, “Dicks: The Musical” feels like an attempt at a Midnight Madness movie, but is more outrageous than actually funny. There are amusing moments, mostly courtesy of Mullally and Lane, who understand, unlike Sharp and Jackson, that not every line has to be delivered with the annoying enthusiasm of Woody Woodpecker in the midst of an amphetamine binge.
When Evelyn says, “I’m dumbfounded and flummoxed,” Harris sharply shoots back, “Those were always your best qualities.” It’s a classic set-up and response that raises a laugh because it is character-based and delivered with panache. Unfortunately, the rest of the material is dispensed at a fever pitch, like a manic children’s show television host, creating a white noise that becomes tiresome early on.
“Dicks: The Musical” was probably a blast as a half-hour underground cabaret show, but on the big screen it feels stretched paper thin. For all its surrealist affectation, envelope pushing and yes, even blasphemy, it’s never as shocking as it tries to be.
