Does Ernest love Mollie in ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’?

Martin Scorsese‘s Killers Of The Flower Moon lands on Apple TV+ this week, and has a love story at its heart.

• READ MORE: The wisdom of Martin Scorsese: “I had to go through everything in order to learn”

The film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, is based on a series of murders in the Osage tribe in 1920s Oklahoma.

DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart in the film, with his wife Mollie portrayed by Lily Gladstone. In the film, the pair are embroiled in a complicated and turbulent love story.

In a five-star review of the film, NME wrote: “This is among Scorsese’s most important work. Popular music from the 1920s, Native American songs and Robbie Robertson’s bluesy score help round off this remarkable Western, a film that will linger in the minds of its audience for a long time.”

Does Ernest really love Mollie in ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’?

Speaking to NME about the film, Scorsese discussed conversations he had with DiCaprio about the love story at the centre of the film, and spoke of whether he believed that the love was real.

“Leo DiCaprio and I were trying to figure out what to do with these characters,” he told NME. “At one point, he said, ‘Where’s the heart of this story?’ And I said, ‘The heart of the story is Mollie and Ernest.’”

The director added: “This couple were really in love in reality. Really in love.”

Speaking to BFI, he added: “It was really about how this love story develops, about what love is, and a weak person like Leo’s character Ernest, like Kichijiro in Silence, what did he think? That it was going to go away?”

He added: “I found that a great part of the love story is that he had something in him, Ernest Burkhart, that admired and felt comfortable with the Osage culture. There was some decency there. But for whatever reasons, the weakness of character is interesting to me. And so he’s weak, and he’s dangerous, but there’s still love there. And that’s kind of disturbing but, at the same time, it’s human. It’s what we are. And so that’s what I pursued with Leo, and with Lily, who was very instrumental.”

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