What 'Killers of the Flower Moon' says about our true-crime obsession

Editor's note: This column contains major spoilers for the films "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Anatomy of a Fall."

True crime is hot right now.

Seemingly, every streaming documentary involves a combination of murder, adultery, blackmail, or the misappropriation of vast sums of money. Books on the same subjects fly off the shelves. People tune into podcasts about long-forgotten deaths and disappearances. Heck, there’s even a popular comedy — “Only Murders in the Building” — about true-crime podcasters.

Inevitably, the genre of true crime is ripe for meta commentary and self-critique. Two new films, Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” weave lacerating thoughts into their narratives about how crime is processed by the public. I discussed “Fall” in an earlier column, so I hope to spend more time on “Killers,” where Scorsese suggests that not only is the full truth of a true crime unknowable, but also untellable.

A little background: “Killers of the Flower Moon” is based on journalist David Grann's book telling the almost unbelievable tale of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, who discovers oil underneath their land in the early 20th century.

While they become rich, the white government forces any Native with an oil claim to also be placed under a conservatorship. If that’s not enough, a number of Osage beneficiaries mysteriously die without investigation.

This makes calculating the tragedy tough, but modest estimates put the victim count into the hundreds. Grann’s book also spends a great deal of time detailing how this case was cracked by a then newly-formed organization that would become the FBI.

The book was a hit, and brought to modern light a horrendous injustice. But there’s a sense, as with lots of true-crime literature, that too much emphasis is put on the murderers themselves. That somehow the stories become about the perpetrators, not the victims. That it is exciting for the writer — and the reader — to be taken in by someone who commits one of the ultimate sins, and to witness the tension of whether they will get away with it or not.

Or that the law enforcement officials charged with solving these crimes get more due than the poor souls whose deaths triggered the whole story. Certainly, the biggest challenge for the genre is that often the criminals and the cops are alive to tell their tales. Any court proceeding features pages upon pages of transcripts about the investigation and what the living saw.

It's not intentional that the dead get ignored. But it's easy to lose sight of them when the crime is being recounted by those still with us.

Scorsese is mindful not only of this concern, but also of the general concern of a white filmmaker depicting crimes against indigenous people. He and co-screenwriter Eric Roth remove much of the book’s emphasis on the FBI and place it on Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) and her husband Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The film becomes as much about the complicated marriage between these two than anything else. Sure, Mollie is a mark and Ernest is a murderer. But there’s genuine love there.

If there’s any significant problem with “Killers,” it’s that Scorsese also strongly suggests Ernest is a victim of the true criminal mastermind, his rich uncle William Hale (Robert DeNiro). You see, Ernest is such a lug-head that he can barely form ill intent and is just a pawn in something he can barely understand.

Which seems to defeat the initial point of placing more emphasis on the Osage. Scorsese seemingly acknowledges this problem as well. With the last scene, the filmmaker stages what I think will be one of his more provocative arguments; one that will be debated by cinephiles a long time from now.

The film shifts from the real action to a radio studio where actors recreate the events of the story. There are white actors speaking pidgin Osage and overt references to the show’s sponsor, Lucky Strike cigarettes. Pretty gross.

But then, an unnamed actor played by Scorsese walks up to the mic. Clearing his throat, he reads the obituary for Mollie Burkhart.

“The Osage murders aren’t even mentioned,” he ends by saying.

What does Scorsese mean by this? I believe he is offering a critique of his own limitations as a storyteller. By choosing to tell the story of these murdered Osage, he is going to miss things. He is going to put an emphasis on characters that perhaps he should not. Details will get overlooked.

There is so much more to Mollie Burkhart than her connection to the dastardly men she married into. Scorsese knows that, and knows his audience is probably thinking it as well.

Should he get points for bringing it up to be left off the hook from critique? Scorsese wanted to be a priest at one point. I am pretty sure guilt and uncertainty are as much of his artistic personality as anything else. He longs to be kept on the hook, I would argue.

This is quite similar to what is posed by “Anatomy of a Fall.” That film focuses on a writer charged with murder, and there’s dialogue about how there’s a lot of fiction in fact, that sometimes it's hard for a writer to discern the two elements.

This serves useful not only in understanding the character, but a story where the main character is acquitted of a crime but the audience is never clear if the film believes the judgement. It ends with a character who still very much appears in turmoil with a story that doesn't want the audience to leave with an easy feeling.

There are no easy answers in either film; both argue that a crime rarely leaves anyone untouched. But they also acknowledge the very real void at the center of many of these stories. That victims will be forgotten and that their murders might be the only thing keeping their memories alive.

It is a macabre contradiction, but a fascinating one. Stories cannot always get every detail right and it's good to be reminded of art’s limitations.

James Owen is the Tribune’s film columnist. In real life, he is a lawyer and executive director of energy policy group Renew Missouri. A graduate of Drury University and the University of Kansas, he created Filmsnobs.com, where he co-hosts a podcast. He enjoyed an extended stint as an on-air film critic for KY3, the NBC affiliate in Springfield, and now regularly guests on Columbia radio station KFRU.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: What 'Killers of the Flower Moon' says about our true-crime obsession