NEOREALIST EPOCH PORTRAIT OF A DARK PAST IN THE AMERICAN WEST

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Director Martin Scorsese explores the dark history on the western frontier long after the frontier had disappeared.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) deconstructs a series of mysterious murders within the Osage nation along an oil rich tract of land in Oklahoma during the 1920s.

The Osage become rich from the royalties and begin to enter into interracial partnerships, including interracial marriages, with the white settlers who move into the oil towns for work extracting the oil and to service the boom towns sprung up around the oil economy.

Scorsese casts Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart and Robert De Niro as William Hale in lead roles, with Lily Gladstone as Molly Burkhart cast in a supporting role.

The camera takes a long time to sketch the characters and reveal the crime plot over a 3 hour 26 minute runtime. But all along the linear storyline DiCaprio, De Niro and Gladstone entangle their screen characters with the audience one string at a time. By the time the plot reverses the audience is well invested in the authenticity and genuineness of the characters in this period piece.

The narrative tells the story of a unique setting for a distinct western frontier community facing a moral conundrum that would only occur in America.

This true story becomes part of the filmmakers stylized Americana picture puzzle masterpiece that began in earnest with the sketch of young men and women learning to survive on the streets of New York in Mean Streets (1973). Scorsese further develops a personalized voice for storytelling by shifting subjects to more organized Italian American crime families and mobsters in GoodFellas (1990) and Casino (1995).

The auteur continues to develop his artistry by filming detailed stories about different epochs that become major influences on the national fabric, such as the early years of governance and the New York City neighborhoods in Gangs of New York (2002) and development of Hollywood and innovation in The Aviator (2004) and the Irish mob and the Boston police in The Departed (2006).

Scorsese’s unique ability to tell the stories of Americana while painting the heart wrenching relationships of the individual with the individual in the same room, and the individual with the community on the living streets of the city, defines him as a film artist.

DiCaprio’s Ernest character returns from service during World War I to work for his uncle in Oklahoma. Ernest’s uncle is William Hale, played by De Niro.

Hale has become totally integrated with the Osage nation as a businessperson. But when Hale’s nephew arrives to join his brother as part of the family business, the new business becomes marrying Osage women for their interest in the oil that keeps blowing black gold all over everybody, every day.

Lily Gladstone creates the character Molly Burkhart, an Osage heiress who quickly but carefully falls in love with Ernest. Ernest is truly in love with Molly, but his uncle has sway over him with the long term view of the white family inheriting all the Indian oil money through Ernest’s marriage with Molly.

Gladstone shows how Molly has a lot of dignity with her financial independence. This state of being is made all the more poignant when Molly momentarily losses her dignity when having to ask her white, government appointed guardian for an extra cash disbursement of her own money.

Scorsese creates a transparent telling of the Osage story by highlighting the continued colonization of the American Indian as well as the assimilationist influences that occur when life and business and humanity’s propensity for immorality, such as greed and vice, naturally form a nexus.

Molly should be happy, but she also has the hereditary illness known as diabetes, common among the community, that makes her just as vulnerable as if she was still living in poverty under the subjugation of the white colonialists.

A number of devices are used to bring the audience along as the story unfolds. Without being too overwhelming, the trove of artistic skills becomes apparent, while Scorsese remains an American neorealist, making the dramatization of a true story or at least true facts of an historical event appear as authentic as possible without taking on the shape and form of a documentary.  

DiCaprio provides a voice over for several scenes while the camera frames other scenes as gallery artwork. Images are also important in how the story is told with several scenes having that kind of unorganized awkwardness of people standing still for 30 seconds while a carney photographer takes their portrait.

Similarly to the Aviator, Scorsese recreates the period by frequently panning or angling the camera to capture the set and all the props in the room for an authentic tone and atmosphere. The characters drive the early roadsters of the oil rich on unpaved dirt roads through the center of town, but also the houses are filled with the furniture and trinkets of the era that wealthy people might buy.

An original score composed by Robbie Robertson gently wends through many scenes like the tapping of drums during an Indian dance heard from far off in the distance.

The mystery of some 60 murders occurring over a short time span in a relatively small American Indian population is used as a narrative device. The compelling crime story becomes interwoven with the story of the American Indian and the unique blend of American capitalism, with all the flaws of humanity and guilt of the innocent bystanders that the story entails.

The Osage people succeeded on the land as early as 700 BC by developing the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys and then moved west ever so incrementally before being forced, through war with the Iroquois and settlement with the Americans, onto not yet named as such Oklahoma territory.

In the untold backstory, the Osage people bought their own 1,470,000 acre reservation land, and thereby owned mineral rights, eventhough the land and the rights were still administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The oil find was like blowing black gold all over everybody with oil workers and other white settlers moving in and forming 30 boom towns to work and service the oil economy.

This filmmaker does not just want to tell this story though, he wants the audience to connect with the characters viscerally.

On one level, Scorsese directs facts and brings the story together in a genuine and natural way that seems authentic and as true to life as a dramatization can be, but on another level, the auteur directs emotions and shows the individualistic nature of relationships that are part of, and apart from, the compelling storyline.

In some sense, and at various stages of the film, the crime drama becomes the backstory while Scorsese brings into the foreground the characters and the uniquely and deeply compelling relationships.

DiCaprio has developed this character of a war veteran who genuinely seeks personal relationships. Ernest is not so simpleminded as much as he is swayed under the influence of his charismatic uncle.

DiCaprio shows more depth in his acting by developing a less sophisticated and humbler character than he has for previous films.

De Niro paints Hale as a generous, hardworking businessperson, who can instantly and unflinchingly step into the darker side of his nature if it so suits him, particularly if profit is involved. The white overlords are definitely manipulating the American Indian, but this way of conducting business might not be so different from that particular form of democratic capitalism being conducted everywhere else in America.

Hale can order the killing of an Osage heiress so that her oil money flows his way eventually, but then he can also commiserate with her family at the funeral a few days later.

De Niro gradually synchs up the corruption and the characters’ willingness to advance his self-centered cause through the immoral deeds of others under his sway.

And Scorsese whose life in films often involves either De Niro or DiCaprio in the lead role brings the two acting icons together after the director has enjoyed previous success with ensemble casts and casting two or more marque stars within the same script.

Again, the filmmaker has this overall vision of disclosing a dark time in the treatment of American Indians, but also, he continues to move a complicated script forward through a deconstruction, perhaps one image at a time, of an important stage in the development of modern democratic capitalism.

Scorsese creates this film within the western genre but transitions the genre, just as America was also transitioning at the time, from a western frontier into a crime dramas and film noir. The auteur also maintains his own ancestral heritage by unabashedly relying on the neorealism of Italian cinema within the distinct need of American viewers to be entertained. Instead of horses there are Henry Ford roadsters. Instead of cowboys and Indians, there are the entrepreneurs and the wealthy. Instead of the New York streets and the Las Vegas casinos, the camera enters onto the oil fields and into the sitting rooms of the boom town’s wealthiest citizens.

This Apple Studios Original production is currently playing in theaters.

MARTIN SCORSESE MAKES GREAT ART BEFORE PRODUCING FILM MASTERPIECES

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

American-Italian stylized filmmaking distinctly from the New York neighborhoods gained critical success for the storytelling and the indelible portraits of America.

Director Martin Scorsese creates long interesting narratives with more than one plot reversal for the cast full of talented actors portraying unique characters from the streets of American cities.

Scorsese stays away from depicting sex scenes to draw in audiences, and instead, uses violence and often graphic violence to compel audiences through scene sequences depicting life and death struggles.

Violence draws attention to the moral development of the characters and how a young person might be shaped and formed by the kinetic energy of violence as much as the perpetrator of violence.

In GoodFellas (1990) chaotic violence is intertwined with sardonic humor and the tranquility of comradery and family life.

The sins of the flesh drive many characters, but the storylines are simplified by presenting love interests as another complication in the emotional caldron of relationships. The goal of the crime family is really to make money while violence is only an instrument to make more money or to keep the money machines already in their power and control.

Joe Pesci plays Tommy, whose use of violence becomes so common as to consume him and distract him from the real goal.

Casino (1995) is the unofficial sequel to GoodFellas with the mobsters moving from New York City to set up in the crime rich Las Vegas casino circuit. Robert De Niro is reunited with costar Joe Pesci, with Sharon Stone playing the love interest, while James Woods plays the unwelcomed third party.

The love for money tests the loyalty of even the closest of tightly knit gangsters. But the inevitable human frailties around the sins of the flesh are their undoing with a lot of sex and infidelity going on in the untold backstory to unwind the tightest of friendships.

Scorsese takes his time developing the characters and the relationships between these characters.

When the plot reverses, the audience has already invested emotionally into the script and therefore feel emotionally for the characters as their fate twists and turns through various morality trials often involving crime and graphic violence.

Scorsese likes to put a knife as much as a gun into the hands of his characters. The linear storylines allow for a more complicated narrative continually moving forward, then pushed along a bit by a music score and further acts of violence until people eventually get bumped off at every corner.

The stories merge and then depart from the main narrative, but the audience remains clear on the truth because the plot always moves forward without the sometimes confusing flashbacks and ellipses in which runtime reality may appear a bit confused.

This stylized voice gets the gritty details from having lived in that reality as a young man on Elizabeth Street in New York City’s Little Italy. Scorsese infuses himself into the earlier films as a kind of ghostly omniscient narrator.

In Mean Streets (1973) the young Italian Americans struggle to find themselves while surviving on the streets as the ideas of individual liberation begin to pull them away from the morality code instilled into younger versions of themselves by their parent’s Catholicism.

Scorsese draws the picture of the 1960s using the neorealism that dramatizes life as little as possible by using the real streets instead of movie sets, and the real people of the city instead of Hollywood celebrity actors.

This early New York casting call brings into the first few Scorsese films a young Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, and then eventually, kind of begrudgingly, former child actors Joe Pesci and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Taxi Driver (1976) was the ultimate counterrevolution film driven mainly by honest character development in a tough modern city exploring existential themes of isolation and loneliness. The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

De Niro plays an isolated Vietnam veteran driving a cab in the crime ridden New York City of the 1970s.

Travis befriends 14 year old girl prostitute Iris, played by child actor Jodi Foster. Harvey Keitel plays Iris’ pimp, Sport. The gritty filmmaker incrementally winds the audience up with the expectation that the fate of these three players on the street will eventually collide.

Taxi Driver is a neorealist film about the hopeless outcome for veterans who have made their way back home from the live war theater only to struggle with rejoining society. This theme of an outsider compelled toward the margins by his own passions is a subtext for several of the director’s films.

Scorsese then creates a stylized boxing film in the black and white medium to create the tone and atmosphere from the New York boxing world of the 1940s.

Raging Bull (1980) is Scorsese’s first real masterpiece partly because he uses the camera to paint the story as much as to incrementally follow the character development. The designer of true stories finally put down the pencil and sketchbook and picked up the paint brush and canvass.

De Niro won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the middleweight champion of the world, Jake La Motta. Joe Pesci costars as La Motta’s brother, sports agent and trainer.

Scorsese depicts the boxer in several different stages of his life, from the young up and coming sports narcissist to the aging tragic hero. De Niro transforms his character physically and emotionally along the way, well deserving of  the Academy’s accolades.

The linear boxing narrative flows naturally forward on the momentum of a rollercoaster life that might otherwise be less compelling with time shifts. The temporal sequences become entertaining enough through the telling of facts and the acting art that produces visceral reactions to individual performances.

De Niro had previously won an Oscar in a Supporting Role for his performance as the young Italian immigrant, Vito Corleone, in the Godfather II (1973). De Niro has seven nominations and two wins from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Born in Queens on November 17, 1942, Scorsese would not win an Oscar until directing the South Boston crime drama, The Departed (2006). The star studded ensemble cast with the New York director won four Oscars, including Best Motion Picture and Best Directing.

The crime drama narrative twists and turns through the relationships developed between characters, each of which shares a bit of culpability in the crime and corruption of South Boston. The complicated copper plot gradually fills with double blinds, but the narrative holds together through the relationships created along the way.

One of the best directors in the world then won the 2010 Cecil B. DeMille Award for Achievement in Entertainment from the Golden Globe Foreign Press.

Scorsese and De Niro create some of their best film work together. De Niro also worked in supporting roles with other directors, such as with Kevin Costner in a critically acclaimed performance as Chicago prohibition era gangster Al Capone in the Brian De Palma film, The Untouchables (1987).

De Niro goes through a physical transformation for the role by adding substantial weight to what had previously been a masculine physique for the boxing flick, Raging Bull.

In that same year, De Niro also plays a supporting role to Mickey Rourke in the Alan Parker film, Angel Heart (1987).

Scorsese then finds success with a whole new set of actors from a younger generation of Hollywood stars, telling the old story of Americana in different facets than those presented in stories about the Italian mob.

Scorsese shifts from casting De Niro and Pesci in the marque roles to casting Leonardo Di Caprio, beginning with the historical drama, Gangs of New York (2002). The Scorsese historical crime drama depicts the immigrant gangs fighting for America and the Five Corners neighborhood of Lower Manhattan during the Civil War years.

Scorsese casts Daniel Day-Lewis again after giving the talented actor the lead in the film, The Age of Innocence (1993).

Gangs of New York is another film compelled forward with an ensemble cast of characters and a compelling storyline that twists and turns with a lot of violence and vitriol shared amongst the criminal underworld.

The filmmaker also gets a bit more involved in the historical aspects of the storyline, utilizing the aesthetics of period costumes and historically accurate props in front of the camera. Scorsese becomes so infatuated by the accuracy of the little details of the era that the Five Corners neighborhood becomes a character in the film with the actors and the background extras becoming relegated at times to the role of props.

Dante Ferretti designed and manufactured the set of Old New York in the  legendary Cinecitta Studios in Rome, Italy.

This film portraying the epoch of 1846 onwards is just the introduction to a more detailed, more artful filmmaking that becomes the impetus for a series of period portraits.

A Howard Hughes biopic becomes another Scorsese portrait of America. The Aviator (2004) earned 11 Academy Award nominations, winning five Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor for Cate Blanchett’s performance as the actor Katharine Hepburn.

Scorsese shows an artist’s intensity working with period pieces by panning the camera around to highlight the authentic set designs and props from the era. The camera also zooms in for closeups of the actors and then pans around the set again until catching another subject in the lens.

The Aviator is full of artifacts, including the cars and airplanes used during the era, right down to the broom handle used by a janitor in the airplane development hanger, and the camera flash bulbs on the ground at the entrance to a Hollywood Premier.

Scorsese combines the sound of crushing flash bulbs with the music score and background sound to create a self-reflective moment for the filmmaker and the film industry.

This examination of the early days of Hollywood includes contemporary best actors performing biopic roles as the best actors of the classic cinema.

Scorsese shows his skill in directing by again casting several talented actors in the same film, including Jude Law as Erol Flynn and Kate Beckinsale as Eva Gardner.

At the same time, the director highlights the world class innovation in industry and design that made America.

Hughes begins his filmmaking career in 1927. But this biopic character is not so different a subject with Scorsese again exploring the characters’ inner demons as the narrative brings them closer to that brief moment of redemption.

Italian cinema influenced one of the most influential filmmakers in the world. Scorsese has Catholicism in his backstory with the morality learned at church often underwriting themes of sin, guilt and redemption in the storyline.

These themes of personal truth become attached to the gritty reality of surviving through the filmmakers highly stylized conversation with America, as unique characters are sent on new journeys toward those poignant moments of transcendence.