‘Reservation Dogs’ Star Slams ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ for Being Mostly About White Men

There are some out there complaining that “Killers of the Flower Moon” has Martin Scorsese going all “woke” on his audience.

The gist of the ire, albeit coming from a minority, has Scorsese, with the recommendation of Leonardo DiCaprio, rewriting the script for “Killers of the Flower Moon” because it was mostly about white men.

Now, you have Devery Jacobs, the Indigenous actor of FX and Hulu’s “Reservation Dogs,” taking to Twitter and complaining that the film is — wait for it — mostly about … white men.

Jacobs has “strong feelings” about “Killers of the Flower Moon,” saying the film failed to capture the “honor or dignity” of the Osage characters.

“Being Native, watching this movie was fucking hellfire,” Jacobs wrote. “Imagine the worst atrocities committed against [your] ancestors, then having to sit [through] a movie explicitly filled with them, with the only respite being 30 minute long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings.” 

She went on to add that the Osage characters “felt painfully underwritten, while the white men were given way more courtesy and depth.”

I don’t feel that these very real [Indigenous] people were shown honor or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths,” she continued. “Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.

Jacobs takes issue with a “non-Native” director being “given the liberty to tell our stories,” adding that it centers on the “white perspective.”

In a 9.12 Time cover story, Scorsese had confirmed what his co-star Lily Gladstone told Variety nine months ago, which was that ‘Flower Moon’, tackled less of the FBI and focused more on the perspective of Osage Nation and the pain their community endured.

The film was supposed to be a sprawling crime epic about the FBI’s investigation of the Osage Nation murders in 1920s Oklahoma. It’s Scorsese’s comments that have had some folks dumbfounded:

“After a certain point, I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys,” Scorsese told Zacharek. “Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me.” Jacobs, clearly, didn’t appreciate the effort.

Gladstone originally explained to Variety that Scorsese had re-thought the whole film, which had begun as a kind of “birth of the modern FBI” story. The basic plot would have focused on former Texas Ranger Tom White (whom Leo wanted to play), and how his assignment by boss J. Edgar Hoover was the foundation for creating the FBI.

Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth eventually decided that the story of the “birth of the modern FBI” was only scratching at the surface of the actual story. Gladstone told Variety that Scorsese “worked closely with the real-life Osage Nation to ensure his movie would properly represent the community.”

The result was that “the Osage Nation ended up positively changing Flower Moon from what Scorsese [had] originally planned.”

“It’s a different movie than the one [Scorsese] wanted to make, almost entirely because of what the community had to say about how it was being made and what was being portrayed.”

If I hadn’t already seen, and really liked, “Killers of the Flower Moon” then maybe I would have had some reservations and negative thoughts about the film’s reconfiguration, but this film works on so many levels that it doesn’t even matter. There’s nothing “woke,” or whatever you want to call it, about the film.

I’d rather have this version than any sort of “birth of the FBI” tale. And, quite honestly, if Scorsese wanted to move away from the “white savior” narrative then he would have made the Osage the main characters of his film. Instead, we still have DiCaprio and De Niro’s cruel men as the leads. Jacobs is clearly very angry about that. She says that a native filmmaker should have tackled this “$200 million movie.”

Many months before the film premiered, a commenter on this site had posted about the reasons behind the persistent delays on “Killers of the Flower Moon.” They align fairly well with what we know now:

The main reason for the reshoots is fear of the political optics of the film and the fear of how mainstream critics will respond to it, as well as the various thought-pieces that will ensue.

The issue is that the film primarily focuses on white characters, with the only non-white person with a very significant role being Lily Gladstone, who is given a very submissive role... You'll understand what I mean if you read the book, but she has a ghoulish presence throughout.

However, the plot does basically focus on a white savior (Jesse Plemons) and a "complex bigot" (DiCaprio). The reshoots primarily focused on placing certain scenes to give the non-white characters a more substantial role. The plan WAS to premiere it this year as Apple's main priority.

I could just be over-analyzing Scorsese and Gladstone’s quotes, but obviously in today’s climate, if you’re representing a minority group on-screen and they personally come up to you with concerns about how they are being portrayed, you need to listen to them. You don’t want them to bad-mouth your representation of them — the optics would be terrible.

As for Jacobs, does she even realize that the Osage murders were not even that well known until Scorsese tackled the story in ‘Killers’? Would she rather just not have this incredibly tragic story told at all? Now, thanks to Scorsese, millions of Western audiences have learned about the sad plight of the Osage.