Problems of the Osage

It's a gamble, I suppose, but at least the resolution saves the project. Whether it means a better film remains (literally) to be seen. Meanwhile, for those of us on the outside, this fascinating tussle has much to do with the sometime fine distrinctions between art and craft or art and marketing, even art or justice.

I'm talking about Martin Scorcese's latest film project, Killers of the Flower Moon, and a script based on the 2017 best-seller of the same title, David Grann's journalistic powerhouse that documented abuse afflicted on the Osage people of northern Oklahoma by white men who murdered their victims in order to secure the land rites that had made the Osage to come along among the nation's most wealthy citizens. Pawhuska, Oklahoma, a small, northern Oklahoma town, had a Rolls-Royce dealership--that kind of wealthy. 

The problem had been brewing for some time because the film's star, Leonardo diCaprio, had found himself leaning toward playing another character in the story than the one he'd been contracted to play. He wanted to play the nephew of one of the murderers, although he'd been drawn into the project to play the FBI agent who comes in from Washington to unravel the horrors, the character who, by one measure, is the "hero" of the story.

But diCaprio's desire to play the nephew of a murderer is artistically understandable because there had to be such characters in a story that features such flat-out diabolical behavior. Some fortune-hunting white husbands killed the Osage mothers of their own children in order to secure tribal land rites. It seems diCaprio was more fascinated by those madly conflicted characters than he was the FBI's young agent, the guy in the white hat who rode into town and ended the bloody horrors. 

Makes sense. The actor in DiCaprio wanted to play the conflicted guy, not the wonderful hero, the tough role, not the easy one. He wanted the film to be more character study than good guys vs. bad guys, even though the scenario he preferred would almost certainly result in a movie that was more moody and ethereal than blockbusters tend to be. 

What's more, the insider's role diCaprio much preferred may well make the original story line less prominent--how, for the love of money, white men murdered Native women who'd carried their children. If the story is really about inner wars, terrors of the spirit, in this case between barbarism and love, then the racial injustice that blackens the whole bloody saga loses its power. Whenever a story moves deeply into examination of human character, there is going to be less emphasis on plot; the real story then, takes place inside the soul not outside.

Frankly, those films make less money. What diCaprio wanted may well make the movie less of a box-office bonanza. 

But that's not all. The changes could becloud the racial injustice that lies at the foundation of all the action. DiCaprio's version may well examine a tortured soul, and not create the intense bright lights Hollywood can bring to the injustice afflicted upon the Osage people. 

Then again, neither would his request feature the heroism of a fledgling investigative organization called the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The subtitle of David Grann's book is The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. 

It's a great fight with significant artistic, economic, and social justice implications. Apple owns it now. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, if you still haven't, read the book. You won't leave the easy chair unaffected.