Killers of the Flower Moon director Martin Scorsese has explained the surreal ending of his latest acclaimed movie.
Twitter user @EmmaTolkin posted a video of the iconic filmmaker speaking at a Killers of the Flower Moon screening and explaining the film’s ending, which sees it briefly transition into a radio show narrated by Scorsese himself.
“All of this tragedy, this catastrophe, ends up as a 20-minute radio show for entertainment,” Scorsese explained. “And then, ultimately, as I’m making the picture over a period of that time, a couple of years, I realize, too, we’re making entertainment, in effect. And therefore … the last words had to be spoken by me, taking on that mantle — I should say, that burden — of whether or not … maybe taking on the culpability, too, of being part of a culture that is complicit in this, in a sense. So I tried to make it as honest a film as possible, and as truthful a film as possible, because our way in there was the love story between Molly and Ernest and how that reflects the macrocosm of the situation and the catastrophe. I felt we had to end with that radio show.”
You can see the video of Scorsese’s explanation below:
“At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight,” the Apple film’s synopsis reads. “The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder. Based on a true story and told through the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart and Mollie Kyle, Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic western crime saga, where real love crosses paths with unspeakable betrayal.”
Who stars in Killers of the Flower Moon?
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Tatanka Means, Michael Abbott Jr., Pat Healy, Scott Shepherd, Jason Isbell, and Sturgill Simpson.