with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons

Scorsese introduces his movie as an important testament to a grave injustice. He acknowledges the assistance of the Osage nation who helped him make the movie as authentic as possible. The story is about a conspiracy to rob the Osage of their money through strategic marriages and murders.

The movie starts in the early part of the 20th century with a burial, of a pipe, that signifies the Osage way of life, and mourns the replacement by white people customs. Soon the Osage are drenched in oil, and become rich from their joint agreements with oil companies. Driving fancy cars, sending their children to private school, going to clubs demonstrate how money makes the sad pronouncement at the pipe burial come true. The locations in Oklahoma where the Osage live range from a town that could have been recreated from the old Hollywood westerns to vast tracts of prairie, now suddenly dotted with oil wells. Osage murder victims show up in odd places, with no investigation.

Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo Di Caprio), still wearing his army uniform from serving in World War I, arrives in the town where his uncle Bill Hale (Robert De Niro) lives large on his cattle ranch. Bill, nicknamed King, claims the Osage as his friends, some of the greatest people on earth. To call Ernest dull would be an understatement. His uncle drills him on his habits as if he were being interviewed for a job, which he is, sort of. King wants his simple minded nephew to marry one of the wealthy Osage women, Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Later, King would like to arrange for Mollie and her sisters to meet a premature end so that the money they had reaped from their oil rights will go to their white husbands.

Ernest is well named, at first. He seems smitten with Mollie, and their relationship is one of the puzzles of the story, that it could continue in the face of the damage the white Hale clan is doing to her family. Mollie is in love with her husband. She knows he is under the influence of his corrupt uncle. She is a complicated intelligent character and Lily Gladstone performs the part with subtlety and grace. All of the women Osage characters are perfectly acted. De Niro’s mastery is in evidence. Only DiCaprio seems miscast. His constant frown does not reflect enough range. To focus on this character, a dull witted corrupt man in love with a decent very ill woman, is challenging.

Mollie catches on to what is happening and once she is saved from the poison her husband is obediently administering, per the instructions of his uncle, she travels to Washington DC and implores President Calvin Coolidge directly to investigate the mysterious and continuous murders of her people. As a result, the Bureau of Investigation visits the Osage territory and gets Ernest to tell all.

As the federal investigator, Tom White, Jesse Plemons’ acting is as subtle as the character he plays. John Lithgow and Brendan Fraser play lawyers assigned to the case. The movie has a high level of talent, production values, costumes. But the casting of Di Caprio, who is just too old to be playing this part (as is De Niro but it doesn’t matter as much because he is supposed to be a bit older), and who dominates the story, seems wrong. The scenes of many characters double crossing or getting double crossed start and stall the rhythm that make you wonder when the movie will finally be over. A scene where King spanks Ernest does not add anything to the story.

What does work are the rituals surrounding Osage deaths. Their knowledge of what was happening to steal their oil rights, but inability to do anything about it because of their being Indians depicts a tragedy embedded in American history, much like the Tulsa massacre that took place nearby. The owl visiting the Osage to signal they were going to die is vividly photographed.

With the attempts to emphasize authenticity, De Niro’s character seemed fluent in Osage language, but why the subtitles appeared sporadically is a mystery. Did the movie makers think we would figure out what was being said? The movie, three and a half hours long, drags. Or should it have been a documentary series on television? There are so many vivid characters I would have liked to get to know better, such as John Ramsey, played by Ty Mitchell with unforgettable complexity.

Still, I admire Scorsese for making this movie, with his opening statement crediting the Osage for contributing to the picture, and his customary excellence in production.