"This film was painful": Indigenous actress from Canada slams "Killers of the Flower Moon"
Reservation Dogs star Devery Jacobs isn’t happy with how director Martin Scorsese’s new film Killers of the Flower Moon portrays violence against Indigenous people.
The actress — who is from Kahnawà:ke, a First Nations reserve off the island of Montreal — shared her “strong feelings” about the film in a thread on X.
“Being Native, watching this movie was f**king hellfire,” she posted on Monday. “Imagine the worst atrocities committed against [your] ancestors, then having to sit [through] a movie explicitly filled [with] them.”
Being Native, watching this movie was fucking hellfire. Imagine the worst atrocities committed against yr ancestors, then having to sit thru a movie explicitly filled w/ them, w/ the only respite being 30min long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings
— Devery Jacobs (@kdeveryjacobs) October 23, 2023
Killers of the Flower Moon is based on a novel of the same name by David Grann.
Set in the 1920s, it follows the real-life FBI investigation into a series of murders of wealthy members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma after oil is found on their land.
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone, who is from the Blackfeet Nation in Montana.
DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a man who marries Osage woman Mollie Kyle, played by Gladstone. Burkhart gets involved in a violent plan to murder Kyle and her family.
While Jacobs praised Gladstone and all of the other Indigenous actors in Killers of the Flower Moon, saying that they were “the only redeeming factors” in the film, she said they were “painfully underwritten.”
“The white men were given way more courtesy and depth,” she wrote.
Jacobs then acknowledged Scorsese’s acclaimed filmmaking and why the movie might be showing this violence against Indigenous people.
“I get the goal of this violence is to add brutal shock value that forces people to understand the real horrors that happened to this community,” she said.
“BUT — I don’t feel that these very real people were shown honor or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths.”
She said she disagrees with this notion and believes that showing more murdered Indigenous women on screen only “normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.”
I don’t feel that these very real people were shown honor or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths.
Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.
— Devery Jacobs (@kdeveryjacobs) October 23, 2023
“I can’t believe it needs to be said, but [Indigenous people] exist beyond our grief, trauma and atrocities,” posted Jacobs.
“Our pride for being Native, our languages, cultures, joy, and love are way more interesting and humanizing than showing the horrors white men inflicted on us.”
The issue comes down to non-Indigenous directors telling their stories, Jacobs said, adding that white filmmakers tend to centre the white perspective and focus on Indigenous people’s pain.
She isn’t the only Indigenous person in the film industry that shares these feelings.
The Osage Nation language consultant on Killers of the Flower Moon expressed his complicated feelings about the film in a recent red-carpet interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“I really wanted this to be from the perspective of Mollie, and what her family experienced, but I think it would take an Osage to do that,” said Christopher Cote.
At the film’s premiere, Osage language consultant Christopher Cote shares his complicated feelings about #KillersOfTheFlowerMoon pic.twitter.com/DKR0KcsLTs
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) October 17, 2023
Jacobs strongly agrees.
“I would prefer to see a $200 million movie from an Osage filmmaker telling this history, any day of the week,” she wrote.
Killers of the Flower Moon is now in theatres, and these criticisms from Jacobs and other Indigenous people are definitely things to consider if you do decide to watch the film.
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