NEW YORK (AP) ā A moment from years ago keeps replaying in Martin Scorseseās mind.
When Akira Kurosawa was given an honorary Academy Award in 1990, the then 80-year-old Japanese filmmaker of āSeven Samuraiā and āIkiru,ā said he hadnāt yet grasped the full essence of cinema.
It struck Scorsese, then in post-production on āGoodfellas,ā as a curious thing for such a master filmmaker to say. It wasnāt until Scorsese also turned 80 that he began to comprehend Kurosawa's words. Even now, Scorsese says heās just realizing the possibilities of cinema.
āIāve lived long enough to be his age and I think I understand now,ā Scorsese said in a recent interview. āBecause there is no limit. The limit is in yourself. These are just tools, the lights and the camera and that stuff. How much further can you explore who you are?ā
Scorseseās lifelong exploration has seemingly only grown deeper and more self-examining with time. In recent years, his films have swelled in scale and ambition as heās plumbed the nature of faith ( ) and loss ( ).
His latest, about the systematic killing of Osage Nation members for their oil-rich land in the 1920s, is in many ways far outside Scorseseās own experience. But as a story of trust and betrayal ā the film is centered on the loving yet treacherous relationship between Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), a member of a larger Osage family, and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI veteran who comes to work for his corrupt uncle (Robert De Niro) ā itās a profoundly personal film that maps some of the themes of Scorseseās gangster films onto American history.
More than the back-room dealings of āCasino,ā the bloody rampages of āGangs of New Yorkā or the financial swindling of āThe Wolf of Wall Street,ā āKillers of the Flower Moonā is the story of a crime wave. Itās a disturbingly insidious one, where greed and violence infiltrate the most intimate relationships ā a genocide in the home. All of which, to Scorsese, harkens back to the tough guys and the weak-willed go-alongs he witnessed in his childhood growing up on Elizabeth Street in New York.
āThatās been my whole life, dealing with who we are,ā says Scorsese. āI found that this story lent itself to that exploration further.ā
āKillers of the Flower Moon,ā a $200-million, 206-minute epic produced by Apple that's in theaters Friday, is an audacious big swing by Scorsese to continue his kind of ambitious, personal filmmaking on the largest scale at a time when such grand, big-screen statements are a rarity.
Scorsese considers āKillers of the Flower Moonā āan internal spectacle.ā The Oklahoma-set film, adapted from , might be called his first Western. But while developing Grannās book, which chronicles the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI, Scorsese came to the realization that centering the film on federal investigator Tom White was a familiar a type of Western.
āI realized: āYou donāt do that. Your Westerns are the Westerns you saw in the late ā40s and early ā50s, thatās it. Peckinpah finished that. āWild Bunch,ā thatās the end. Now theyāre different,ā he says. āIt represented a certain time in who we were as a nation and a certain time in the world ā and the end of the studio system. It was a genre. That folklore is gone.ā
Scorsese, after conversations with Leonardo DiCaprio, pivoted to the story of Ernest and Mollie and a perspective closer to Osage Nation. Consultations with the tribe continued and expanded to include accurately capturing language, traditional clothing and customs.
āItās historical that Indigenous Peoples can tell their story at this level. Thatās never happened before as far as I know,ā says Geoffrey Standing Bear, Principal Chief of Osage Nation. āIt took somebody who could know that weāve been betrayed for hundreds of years. He wrote a story about betrayal of trust.ā
āKillers of the Flower Moonā for Scorsese grew out of a period of reflection and reevaluation during the pandemic. COVID, he says, was āa gamechanger.ā For a filmmaker whose time is so intensely scheduled, the break was in some ways a relief, and it allowed him a chance to reconsider what he wants to dedicate himself to. For him, preparing a film is a meditative process.
āI donāt use a computer because I tried a couple times and I got very distracted. I get distracted as it is,ā Scorsese says. āIāve got films, Iāve got books, Iāve got people. Iāve only begun this year to read emails. Emails, they scare me. It says āCCā and there are a thousand names. Who are these people?ā
Scorsese is laughing when he says this, surely aware that heās playing up his image as a member of the old guard. (A moment later he adds that voicemail āis interesting to do at times.ā) Yet heās also keen enough with technology to and make cameos in
Scorsese has for years been the preeminent conscience of cinema, passionately arguing for the place of personal filmmaking in an era of moviegoing where films can be devalued as ācontent,ā and big-screen vision can be shrunk down on streaming platforms.
āIām trying to keep alive the sense that cinema is an artform,ā Scorsese says. āThe next generation may not see it that way because as children and younger people, theyāre exposed to films that are wonderful entertainment, beautifully made, but are purely diversionary. I think cinema can enrich your life.ā
āAs Iām leaving, Iām trying to say: Remember, this can really be something beautiful in your life.ā
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
