Killers Of The Flower Moon Absolutely Justifies That 3.5 Hour Runtime
The late, great Roger Ebert once coined the axiom: "No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough." Simply put, a film's length doesn't matter if you, as an audience member, are engaged and moved throughout.
When a filmgoer complains about a film's length being too great or too brief (something I am guilty of), or perhaps whines that films, in general, are getting longer (a recorded fact), their grievance usually translates to an established genre's traditional storytelling tropes. Superhero stories are colorful adventure tales that invariably climax in a violent fight or military confrontation. Does such a tale require three hours of screen time? Conversely, can a feature film feel like a true American epic — an event worth becoming breathless over — if you're back in the sunlight 90 minutes after the curtain opens? A film's runtime, the discussion goes, has come to dictate the tone and the content of the movie. Long movies are "important," while short movies aren't.
As such, one might encounter online pundits talking about whether or not a film can "justify" its runtime. Does a film that runs over three hours "feel" like an epic? From a mere consumer advocacy standpoint, will watching something like Martin Scorsese's new film "Killers of the Flower Moon" be worth spending 206 minutes in a theater?
As it so happens, yes. But it's not because "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a vast epic that covers decades, nor is it a massively complex story that requires a lot of explanations, twists, turns, flashbacks, and backstories. "Killer of the Flower Moon" is worth sitting through because of its calming, deliberate pace. It's a film that breathes. It can't be too long because, as Ebert would say, it's good.
Hung up on effiency
I have seen certain film critics fall into specious arguments about films' storytelling efficiency. Some screenwriting students and rising essayists may have affected the philosophy that every scene in a movie needs to advance the plot or communicate vital information to the story. You hear this sentiment crop up in frustratingly recurring conversations about the necessity of sex scenes in movies. What elements of the story, the argument goes, can be communicated to the audience while two (or more) characters have stripped naked to have some sexy fun? Anti-sex-scene advocates seem to prefer to know that characters have had sex rather than watch it. Not to be prurient about it, but ... aren't sex scenes just supposed to be fun in themselves?
This sort of "efficiency" thinking, naturally, discounts the vast bulk of what we go to cinemas for. Cinema can take as much time as it wants to establish mood, to establish characters, to embellish its tone, or just to look at something beautiful. Remember the sequence in James Cameron's "Avatar: The Way of Water," wherein the young Na'Vi children simply swam around in alien waters for several minutes enjoying the sights? Is it okay to simply sit for a moment and be dazzled? You know, the thing Nicole Kidman talks about in that AMC bumper?
Sometimes it's comforting to hear characters talk about something that isn't the plot, merely so we can get to know them better. Often, a lot of time might be needed in order for a character to properly change, or to enact a plan. Or perhaps, if a character seems clueless and amoral for 180 straight minutes — as Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) is in "Killers of the Flower Moon" — it says something about their incapacity for change.
Film is more than story
"Killers of the Flower Moon" takes place just after World War I in the Osage Nation, located in Oklahoma. The local Osage people have become incredibly wealthy incredibly quickly, as there are vast deposits of oil on their land. This has attracted a bevy of insidious white vultures who begin enacting elaborate plots to siphon as much money as possible from the Osage people into their own pockets.
Scorsese's film focuses on the villains of the story, notably William King Hale (Robert De Niro). Hale poses as a glad-handing champion of the local community but is actually flouting the law and committing multiple murders, mostly of the Osage people, to ensure cash is flowing in the "right" direction (which is to say, toward white people). He encourages white men to marry Osage women, but those women have a curious way of becoming very, very sick and dying shortly after the wedding. And guess who stands to inherit the women's fortunes?
"Killers of the Flower Moon" indicates that Hale feels casually justified in his violent actions through a not-so-latent sense of white supremacy. Hale is in charge of a vast criminal enterprise that went uninvestigated for years because the U.S. government didn't look into the deaths of the Osage people. "Killers of the Flower Moon" also argues that Hale couldn't have established such an enterprise if he didn't have scads of feckless, shallow, greedy idiots in his employ. Ernest was one of those people. Early in the film, Ernest proudly that he cares for little in life beyond money, booze, and sex.
When you feel that you deserve the world by dint of your race, and your goal is to amass wealth and power for its own sake, then you, sir, are one of the world's supervillains.
Whiny white guys
Scorsese likely could have included everything he needed to say in a 90-minute version of "Killers of the Flower Moon." Indeed, when one wants to start thinking about storytelling efficiency, may I point them to the classic website Angry Alien which condenses famous movies into 30-second snippets using animated rabbits. Entire cinematic stories, it turns out, can often be reduced to mere 30-second retellings. Story is less important to cinema than many pundits might have you believe.
Indeed, to employ another Ebert-ism: "A film is not about what it's about, but how it's about it." The telling is more important than the plot.
Scorsese wants to tell the story, but the focus is on the word "tell," not "story," He savors small moments between characters. He takes time to look at vast vistas, to show characters glancing suspiciously at one another, and to give characters moments to interact organically. It's tragic when certain characters are murdered in "Killers of the Flower Moon," but Scorsese is wise enough to show them living first, establishing where they fit into a family hierarchy and how they communicate with others. When an Osage woman dies in "Flower Moon," Scorsese takes the time to assure audiences that this was a grave crime wherein an actual, convivial life has been snuffed out.
And when a criminal agrees to commit a criminal act at the behest of Ernest or Hale, we can see how much they needed to push, to whine, to plead, in order to make it happen. "Killers of the Flower Moon" argues that white supremacy, organized crime, and systematic oppression can't happen unless callow white dudes spend a lot of time whining about s***.