Martin Scorsese always wanted to make a Western, arguably the defining American artform. With Killers of the Flower Moon, he got his chance to chronicle the way the country has been moulded from violence and prejudice, writes Adrian Pennington.
“I loved many of the westerns I saw when I was growing up and I still do love them,” the director explains in the production notes. “I responded to the pictures built around the traditional myths of the western, the myths of the culture, more than the psychological westerns. Those films nourished me as a filmmaker, but they also inspired me to go deeper into the real history.”
Based on the 2017 non-fiction book by David Grann and written for the screen by Scorsese and Eric Roth, the historical crime drama is set in 1920s Oklahoma and centres on the murders of members of the Osage Nation, the midwestern Native American tribe that became wealthy after the discovery of oil on their land at the end of the 19th century.
The series of brutal crimes, revealed...
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