There have been few filmmakers whose evolution of reaching to a state where they start exploring and experimenting with their stories as they gradually walk past the films that created the unprecedented fame and legacy for them. Martin Scorsese is one of those directors whose works actually have been stereotyped to some extent in the realms of gangster drama a la Italian-American extravaganza. An aspiring filmmaker from the times when Hollywood was just struck with the fever of New Wave filmmaking, an indelible impression has been created whenever the name of Martin Scorsese has ever been mentioned in every nook and corner of cinema.

Following the debacle of how cinema has been imitated and extorted in the name of business and mere projects catering to fandom and distorting the truth of experiencing what cinema has meant to the world throughout the years, Killers of the Flower Moon is a testament of how one should not only curate the essentials of exemplary storytelling, but also how to respect the form of it, and narrate to the stretch of an original timeline, not to accelerate the narrative flow for the sake of “entertainment”.

Adapted from a true crime novel of the same name by David Grann, which centers the plot around a brutal yet unwelcomed domination of white Americans going on a rampage of assassinating people from Osage tribe in Oklahoma, to take over the oil business which created a prosperous community out of people who are entitled to be suppressed by the laws of monarchy throughout the years. The protagonist, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) getting involved in the doldrums of being a loyal cousin to William “King” Hale (Robert DeNiro) eliminating the Red Indian lineage with the implication of mixed blood marriages and cleverly channeling the oil money back to America is what can be described as the true essence of the film, shouting American capitalism in bold and capital letters. Narrating the story of a community much unheard of, or spoken about has been the forte of Scorsese relating to his birth roots, and commercializing the culture has been a by-product of it’s success. Rather going by a downtrodden formulaic treatment, Killers of the Flower Moon went on by reciting the story of disdain and helplessness of the Indian tribe in the veil of poetry, and Mollie Kyle/Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) being the masthead of the tragedy was an accurate representation delivering justice to the unacceptable situation.

As mentioned earlier referring the true sense of cinema, this film is an embodiment of breaking the glass of familiarity with making a 3.5 hours long saga of subdued anarchy going unapologetic and unabashedly establishing the struggle of communities still being as relevant as a third-world country representative. The rusty fields of Americagot drenched in red color both in terms of bloodshed and communal harmony in Marty’s frames with his long-term collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker editing in the guise of shaping the mold of perfection, with Rodrigo Prieto capturing the tonality enhancing it more through his cinematography. This is also a testament to how Scorsese has been dedicated to his team, and how they as a whole has evolved through storytelling changes. For an octogenarian to be an artist, losing the touch of creativity is highly natural, while for Scorsese, his filmmaking has also aged poetically from fast-paced crime dramas to melancholic, mellowed crime tales with an affection of utilizing the technology to its full potential as well.

When he quoted arthouse filmmaking as “This is Cinema”, it was actually a metaphor to his legacy of filmmaking.