Why Lily Gladstone's Killers Of The Flower Moon Golden Globes Win Was So Important
Lily Gladstone just made history. Last night, the "Killers of the Flower Moon" star became the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her part in Martin Scorsese's epic drama, and it's hard not to get swept up in such an achievement. I write about movies for a living but I'll confess I'm mostly an agnostic when it comes to awards season. Often, the awards season hubbub can reduce films to sporting events, and I have no interest in that.
But if there's one person I'm rooting for this awards season, it's Gladstone. She hasn't been nominated for an Oscar just yet, but it seems very likely she's going to get a Best Actress nod for her work. And when and if she does, it seems just as likely she's going to take home the award. And she should — she gave not just the best performance of the year, but arguably one of the best performances in any Scorsese movie, ever. That might sound like hyperbole, but I genuinely believe it.
As Mollie Kyle/Burkhart, Gladstone is magnetic. It's a quiet, internalized performance — one I found to be hypnotic. Whatever "star power" is, Gladstone has it, and then some. I first became aware of Gladstone after her stellar work in Kelly Reichardt's achiningly beautiful "Certain Women." There, Gladstone played Jamie, a mostly silent ranch hand who becomes enamored with a teacher, played by Kristen Stewart. In one of the film's most pivotal, devastating scenes, Gladstone's Jamie all but confesses her feelings for Stewart's character — but not quite — by confronting her in a parking lot and stating, "I just knew if I didn't start driving I wasn't going to see you again. Didn't want that." It's a simple line of dialogue, but Gladstone delivers it with so much subtle gracefulness that it knocks the wind out of you. Her work in "Killers of the Flower Moon" is just as staggering. There's a moment early in the film where she urges her suitor, the dimwitted, scheming Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo Di Caprio), to sit and listen to the rain. On paper, it's a simple moment, but again, Gladstone strikes the perfect cord. We're transfixed.
Just give Lily Gladstone the Oscar
Gladstone is of Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Perce heritage and grew up on a Blackfeet Nation reservation. When she took the stage to claim her award at the Golden Globes last night, she opened with a few words in the Blackfeet language. "I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language — the beautiful community, nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, doing this," Gladstone said (via EW). "I'm here with my mom, who, even though she's not Blackfeet, worked tirelessly to get our language into our classroom so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up. I'm so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I'm not fluent in, up here."
She concluded her speech:
"This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little native kid out there who has a dream who is seeing themselves represented in our stories told by ourselves in our own words with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with and from each other. Thank you all so much."
Again: I'm not much for awards. But if Gladstone isn't nominated for an Oscar, and doesn't take that Oscar home, I'll be very surprised. There's not a single performance from 2023 that has stuck with me as much as hers.