Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have reunited at the Cannes film festival to present a feature together for the first time in almost half a century, discussing their acclaimed new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, on Sunday.
“We haven’t been here together since 76,” said De Niro, recalling the premiere of Taxi Driver, the second of their 10 collaborations, which won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or.
Both men spoke of the importance to them both of sensitively telling the story of a succession of murders that terrorised the Osage people in Oklahoma in the mid-1920s. These killings were motivated by a desire to ensure the new wealth created by oil found on the Osage reservation fell into the hands of white incomers.
Scorsese said he had been so deeply influenced by his encounters with the Native Americans that he switched the film’s focus and decided to tell the story of the crimes from the victims’ perspective.
The 80-year-old director, whose Catholicism has been a dominant theme in many of his films to date, attended a series of Osage council sessions in which he observed their prayers and rituals. “I was so affected and so moved,” he said. “I know what their values are and [that they are] really understanding how to live on this planet. It reoriented me every time they spoke.”
Joining Scorsese at the press conference was Chief Standing Bear, leader of the Osage Nation, who said that his people still suffer to this day. “But I can say on behalf of the Osage Nation that Scorsese and his team have restored trust,” he added.
Killers of the Flower Moon was rapturously received at its premiere on Saturday evening at Cannes, where it is showing out of competition. Scorsese’s 26th feature – and, at almost four hours, one of his longest – is adapted from David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same name.
Questioned about his radical approach to this source material, much of which was rejected in favour of a revisionist take on the case, Scorsese said: “As far as taking risks at this age, what else can I do? Do a comfortable film? Like sitting on a set in the heat is comfortable? We might as well be risking something.”
The director credited the film’s star, Leonardo DiCaprio, with steering much of the story, saying that he and the actor had first imagined the film as being told from the point of view of the FBI. “I felt it is not a whodunnit, but a who-didn’t-do-it. But then Leo asked me: ‘Where is the heart of this story?”
The pair, who had already worked together on five feature films, then concentrated on a real-life character who was “least written about”: an apparent chancer called Ernest Burkhart, who married into the Osage community and became embroiled in the murders.
“I said: ‘Let’s create Ernest as a template for that tragedy of love, trust and betrayal,” said Scorsese, “and what happened to the Indigenous people.’”
De Niro plays DiCaprio’s uncle, and said some of the “systemic racism” shown in the film became clearer to him after witnessing reactions to the killing of George Floyd almost three years ago. “It is the banality of evil, the thing we have to watch out for,” he said, adding: “We see it today.”
The actor has long been a vocal critic of the former president Donald Trump and compared public reaction to his election to the casual inhumanity depicted in the film. “There are people that think he could do a good job – imagine how insane that is.”
