A Slow, Staggering American Conspiracy
Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of David Grann’s best-selling Killers of the Flower Moon explores the rot beneath the myth of American exceptionalism.
When the World War I veteran Ernest Burkhart (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) gets off the train in Osage County, Oklahoma, he is walking into the turn-of-the-century boomtown of Fairfax, a bustling throng of activity that has sprung up out of nowhere following the discovery of oil. Wandering salesmen press leaflets into his hand and promise he can get rich quick; luxurious automobiles buzz around, the atmosphere pulsing with a feeling of runaway success. But as Burkhart is driven by an Osage man named Henry out to the countryside through fields of pumping derricks, he asks
