DRILLING DOWN

“Killers of the Flower Moon.”

- ANTHONY LANE

For fans of James Dean, nothing beats the moment in “Giant” (1956) when an oil well erupts. Dean raises his arms and bathes in the rich rain. Clocking in at three hours and twenty-one minutes, “Giant” chimes with Martin Scorsese’s latest movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which, not to be outdone, is five minutes longer still. In an extraordinary sequence, near the start, we see men of the Osage Nation, stripped to the waist, dancing in slow motion, and in unfeigned joy, as a shower of oil falls upon them. It may be the one happy vision in the entire film. From here on, oil will take second place to another precious commodity that gushes with the aid of human know-how. There will be blood.

Written by Scorsese and Eric Roth, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is adapted from the nonfiction book of the same title by David Grann, a staff writer at this magazine. Grann explores the quest for oil under Osage country, in Oklahoma, in the springtime of the twentieth century, and the auctions at which leases for drilling were purchased from Osage landowners. (A single lease could cost more than a million dollars.) In 1920, one reporter, describing the newfound Osage wealth, proclaimed, “Something will have to be done about it.” What was done is soon revealed in the film, as vintage stills of the Osage, posed in their finery or in resplendent automobiles, make way for other images, composed by Scorsese with equal calm: dead bodies of the Osage, viewed from above, laid out on their beds. A voice-over gives their names and their ages, adding, “No investigation.” If they are being murdered, nobody seems to mind.