donald case

This may be the magnum opus for one of the most brilliant directors of all time. It's incredibly shot, Scorsese does period pieces better than anyone. It's poignant and moving. Unlike the book, you know the bad guys right away and wrestle with how they manipulate and murder and get away with it. Lily Gladstone is a surefire Oscar Winner here and it will gobble up nominations. Spoilers below, proceed with caution. The racism is so blatant but also nuanced. It's telling that Earnest always asks about his half-blood child that appears white, but not his daughter that is darker skinned. Even in the last scene with him and Mollie, she calls him out on that. The old cowboy who was happy to kill an "indian" but after hanging out with him couldn't shoot him from the front as asked (to fake suicide), and instead shoots him from behind (which is clear murder and catapults the story forward) is a fine line of knowing a human and not a stereotype. The fact that Earnest actually loves Mollie yet still is complicit in murdering her family is wild, but of course he "loves money, almost as much as he loves his wife." It's so hard seeing through his eyes. He knows he's feeding her heroin at some level, so he takes it as well. He is just dumb as a bag of hammers. I've never seen such a clever epilogue on film before. It was perfect and amazing, and even then you have the makeup caked white guy giving Osage dialogue basically as you'd expect on a 40s radio show. DeNiro has a line at the end trying to convince Earnest that he shouldn't flip "nobody will remember this." We almost didn't. Thanks to the book and this amazing film, we do. Just like Black Wall Street. We must confront our atrocities. 10/10, an amazing movie. Did not feel like 3 and a half hours.