According to Leonardo DiCaprio, Hollywood needs to improve how Native Americans have been portrayed in the past.
Prior to the present actors’ strike, DiCaprio, 48, and Lily Gladstone, his co-star in Killers of the Flower Moon, chatted with Vogue UK. In the interview, they emphasized their admiration for the way the Martin Scorsese-directed movie portrays a time period known to Osage Nation residents as the Reign of Terror.
“Hollywood has a long history and checkered past in its depictions of Native American people,” added DiCaprio. “More work is required. We are approaching a significant reckoning with our past, you know.
The more these tales can be recounted honestly, the more of a healing process it may be, he continued.
The story of Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Gladstone) is based on David Grann’s 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI).
Burkhart traveled to Oklahoma in the 1920s in the hopes of becoming wealthy during the Osage oil boom, and the unusual couple eventually started dating.
The oil on their territory at the time made the Native Americans who lived on the Osage Reservation largely independent and affluent. When White residents planned a string of killings against the Osage people, their prosperity came to an end.
One of the things that drew DiCaprio and Gladstone to the movie was the chance to shed light on this obscure period of history.
The Reign of Terror was not so long ago, according to Gladstone. “I’d rather not call this a Western. It’s a tragedy, which I’m glad about.
It’s a lost chapter in American history and an open wound that is still infected, said DiCaprio.
Although the majority of the production team for the movie was White, Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear of the Osage gave it his complete backing, according to Vogue UK. Gladstone, for her part, views the cast and crew as pals.
Nobody will give a $200 million film project to an Osage filmmaker, she told the publication. “A certain degree of allyship is absolutely required.”
DiCaprio drew comparisons between the Tulsa Race Massacre and the Reign of Terror. While the movie was being made, DiCaprio stayed in Tulsa, and he revealed to Vogue UK that his stay there fell on the 100th anniversary of the first murder in the Black Wall Street Massacre as well as the start of the Reign of Terror on the Osage Nation.
It was crucial for him to understand that there were people of color who were independently affluent alongside a sizable number of virulently racist White people who wanted to exploit those resources at all costs.
Consider Standing Rock. Consider what is occurring in the Amazon and in Indonesia. These locations, which have enormous resources, are also the ones that have seen the most bloodshed.
In addition to DiCaprio and Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, and Cara Jade Myers all-star in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Killers of the Flower Moon’s focus on the White characters was changed after Scorsese, 80, admitted to Time magazine that he had rewritten an earlier script of the film.
I eventually realized I was making a movie about all the White guys, which worried me since it meant I was approaching the subject from the outside in.
The film debuts in theaters on October 20 and will thereafter stream on Apple TV+.