Curse of the (Marty) masterpiece

Therersquos a scene in Martin Scorsesersquos Killers of the Flower Moon in theatres later on Apple TV where Robert De Niro in a white colonialistrsquos role Bill Hale wishes his nephew Leonardo DiCaprio well ldquoGod bless you and your childrdquo he says or something to the effectThis Hale fellow is plain evil I canrsquot sense anything redemptive about this character whorsquos been pretending to be a friendbenefactor of the native American Osage tribe at one endAt the other hersquos mercilessly behind their murders plotting his own nephew to marry a woman from the community Lily Gladstone Just so they can take over lands where oil has been discovered latelyThat is early 1920sDe Niro has famously spoken about the need to be less interesting as a person so you can be more interesting as an actorartisteYet the most interesting thing hersquos done as a public figure is launching a vitriolic tirade full of cusses once against the then American President Donald Trump Observe the aforementioned dialogue by De Niro in the film Please tell me if hersquos slyly imitating Trump in the sceneDiCapriorsquos character of course looks perennially confused hence the actor playing it Hersquos in love with the native American woman hersquos married to What kinda man slowly poisons the woman he loves and finishes her family off alongsideKillers of the Flower Moon Killers is based on a 2014 David Grann nonfiction novel of the same name Scorsesersquos tour de force culmination of mob operas he specialises in The Irishman 2019 was based on a book in the same journalistic genre Charles Brandtrsquos I Heard You Paint Houses Thatrsquos his current tripThe final halfhour in The Irishman which is a striking meditation on the mundane ageing after a life of crime explains its exacting length Take that away and you have any other film detailing Americarsquos underworld history with Jimmy Hoffa at the centreAlso read Zoe Kravitz and Channing Tatum get engaged after 2 years of datingAlso The Irishman sufficiently bore a sense of occasionmdashbringing together De Niro and Al Pacino into the Scorsese universe A necessary erasure of the memory of Righteous Kill 2008 that got the two actors on screen since Michael Mannrsquos Heat 1995Killers is around three and half hours longmdashwhich including interval and commute is more than what Narayana Murthyrsquos prescribed 70hour work week will allowItrsquos not laboriously boring still Hell no Could be sleepinducing sometimes Could it have been shorter tauter more dramatically stirringhellip Canrsquot see why notDoes it equally reflect the momentous maiden event of uniting two prime muses from separate phases of Scorsesersquos careermdashDe Niro Taxi Driver Casino Goodfellas and DiCaprio The Departed Shutter Island The Wolf of Wall Street Nope These arenrsquot the characters Irsquod imagined the two burning up the screen with ScorseseWhich isnrsquot to suggest plainly malicious people with barely any facesaving traits to their complex personalities must not be protagonists in a picture Although I do enjoy quasimoral men doing inspiring things restoring faith in humanity on screenThat guy in Killers was likely to be the Bureau of Investigations Agent Tom White Jesse Plemons getting to the bottom of the series of deaths in Osage nation Only this gent post a late entry feels hersquos merging into the background Almost as much as yoursquoll notice the Native Americans themselvesWhich is odd for a movie thatrsquos ostensibly telling an important story of Caucasian dominationmdashfrom the POV of the victim rather than the perpetratorImportant because itrsquos white menmdashand among the worldrsquos most important filmmakers evermdashlooking inwards at the bloodied past that got them to where they areEvery part of the world including the US has such a story An EcuadorianAmerican told me once about how if you look at countries where white colonisers decided to settle down rather than plunder and leavemdashthey totally destroyed local culturesBritain America Australia appear far too similar half a globe apart Unlike India for instance And whatrsquos popular history or his story if not men hunting men anywayOf course Killers is set at a time when ideas of a rightsbased society were set in stone A comparison to say Kevin Costnerrsquos Dances with Wolves 1990 doesnrsquot make sensemdashalso because you barely see anything of the outer world in Killers beyond midshots of the main town centreIs this film to Scorsese what the gloriously disturbing Django Unchained 2012 was to Quentin Tarantino Hardly as visceral Either way Tarantino and Scorsese arenrsquot from the same rawstock Tarantino is more the writer of scripts like novels from scratch The relentlessly prolific Scorsese is a director with writing riffsLike Tarantino Scorsese is a filmmakersrsquo filmmaker In the sense of his impact on the intimate indiespace over six decades unlike his top contemporary Steven Spielberg for instance Which also means you start making a Scorsese movie in your head as an audience if it hasnrsquot lived up to your expectationsOtherwise in Killers you watch him fully checking off a Western in his filmography at 80 And that adorable cameomdashin the lovely epilogue recreating a radio show from the 1920s De Niro DiCaprio gotta return for something better No end to human greed you seeMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper