‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ “dehumanises” Native Americans, says ‘Reservation Dogs’ star
Reservation Dogs star Devery Jacobs has criticised Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon over the film’s portrayal of Native Americans.
The actor, who plays Elora Danan Postoak in the FX comedy drama, shared a 15-post thread on X (fka Twitter) describing her “painful” experience watching the film.
“I HAVE THOUGHTS. I HAVE STRONG FEELINGS,” she began in the thread. “This film was painful, grueling, unrelenting and unnecessarily graphic. Being Native, watching this movie was fucking hellfire.
“Imagine the worst atrocities committed against yr ancestors, then having to sit thru a movie explicitly filled w/ them, w/ the only respite being 30min long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings.”
I HAVE THOUGHTS. I HAVE STRONG FEELINGS.
This film was painful, grueling, unrelenting and unnecessarily graphic.
A thread.
pic.twitter.com/THxucE9TkZ
— Devery Jacobs (@kdeveryjacobs) October 23, 2023
While Jacobs praised the performance of Lily Gladstone, who also starred in Reservation Dogs, she said Killers Of The Flower Moon‘s Osage characters were “painfully underwritten” in comparison to white characters Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and William King Hale (Robert De Niro).
“But while all of the performances were strong, if you look proportionally, each of the Osage characters felt painfully underwritten, while the white men were given way more courtesy and depth,” Jacobs wrote.
She added: “I don’t feel that these very real people were shown honour or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths. Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalises the violence committed against us and further dehumanises our people.”
“I can’t believe it needs to be said, but Indig ppl exist beyond our grief, trauma & atrocities,” Jacobs wrote. “Our pride for being Native, our languages, cultures, joy & love are way more interesting & humanising than showing the horrors white men inflicted on us.”
She concluded by acknowledging “how cathartic” it must be for the Osage communities involved in the film to have their story presented, but said she would prefer “to see a $200 million movie from an Osage filmmaker telling this history”.
Jacobs added: “All in all, after 100 years of the way Indigenous communities have been portrayed in film, is this really the representation we needed?”
Killers Of The Flower Moon centres on a series of Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation during the 1920s, which were committed after oil was discovered on their land.
In a five-star review, NME described it as a “film that will linger in the minds of its audience for a long time”.
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Adam Starkey
NME
