Killers of the Flower Moon: A Formal Feeling

Toward the beginning of Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Martin Scorsese’s guileful masterwork of unguileful plunder, a few young members of the Osage Nation are shown in a moment of reverie. They’re jumping and yelling, all elation and sublime relief, their skin covered in rich black oil. The fruit of the earth has brought their people great material wealth, and that’s enough reason to have fun, get hedonistic, throw a party. Scorsese casts the scene in slow motion—that time signature of self-indulgent pleasure—and scores it with pulsating drums. The oil boom is a blessing. Never mind the foreboding that is humming underneath.