The way Native Americans were treated over the centuries after the colonization of America by Europeans "remains a wound to be healed," Martin Scorsese told AFP in May at Cannes, where Killers of the Flower Moon was being screened. The film, in theaters this week, takes up Scorsese's classic themes, a story of violence, criminals and love, but it is also perhaps one of the director's most political. It describes how white men plundered members of a Native American people, the Osage, on whose land oil was found during the 1920s.
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Maybe by knowing our history and understanding where we are, we can make a difference and live up to what our country is meant to be," the American filmmaker told AFP at the presentation of the film out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
If the plot is set in 1920s Oklahoma, Scorsese believes that the violence and staged crimes could just as easily happen today. Even if he is careful to specify that it is not a "film with a message" that would only speak to the convinced and "deviate from the humanity" of the characters.
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I don't think it's a period film. The questions are the same as they are today. I hope that democracy will survive, although it is sometimes very fractured. But the country is still young, it still suffers from its youthful wounds. This film is a way of acknowledging that, at least," says the director.
I loved westerns, they reflect who we were back then and who we still are, in some ways
Martin Scorsese
Scorsese said he had long dreamed of directing a Western, a style of film that had its heyday "in the 20th century and has disappeared today." "I loved westerns, they reflect who we were back then and who we still are, in some ways," the filmmaker continues.
Killers of The Flower Moon plays with this genre, flipping the camps of good and evil with its cowboy arriving in town to play an extremely murky role. His regret? The film is set during Prohibition, in a state where alcohol consumption was prohibited by law: "I always imagined going to a saloon or a bar, I could have done great scenes (in those places). But it didn't exist" at the time.