As the race for the 2024 Oscars heats up, Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon, adapted from David Grann’s nonfiction 2017 book of the same name, is widely tipped as a frontrunner for the top prizes. Last month, the drama about the real-life Osage murders, masterminded by white men intent upon stealing the oil-rich land “headrights” of the Indigenous people in early 20th-century Oklahoma, topped Sight and Sound’s poll of best films of 2023. In the run-up to Christmas, Awards Daily placed Killers of the Flower Moon as the “best picture frontrunner”, while Variety named Scorsese and actor Lily Gladstone as probable Oscar nominees, with leading man and executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio (first nominated for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape in 1994 and winner for The Revenant in 2016) as on course for his eighth nomination.
With all this awards interest, it’s no surprise that DiCaprio and Gladstone are out on the campaign trail, finally able to talk about the film after the resolution of the actors’ strike, which prevented them from promoting it when it came out in the autumn. And while DiCaprio has a reputation for being less than fond of press interviews (we’ll get to the matter of his very public private life later), he’s clearly eager to support rising star Gladstone, who has much to say about the movie. Indeed, when I ask for somewhere to place my recording device, he goes into an elaborate comedic pantomime of moving a table, then a chair, then another table (“I should have just moved the chair first, shouldn’t I?”) before sitting well back in the sofa he shares with Gladstone and letting her take centre stage.
