Ray Mizumura

At the advanced age of 80 Martin Scorsese continues to be a fresh, energetic filmmaking force. Having witnessed KOTFM today my first impression is that this is in his top five movies. With the western setting Scorsese makes a claim to being in the same league as one of his great influences John Ford. In the purely technical dimension KOTFM is a landmark movie. Photography, editing, sound, music, all add up to narrative atmospherics that astonish. The aesthetics set a new standard for historical period filmmaking. Yet the director's empathy for his human subjects, and his facility at generating that same empathy among audience members, has never been higher. This human touch comes through most powerfully in the performances by the entire cast, with the three leads making an impact that should leave no one unmoved. If there is one person to whom the movie belongs other than Martin Scorsese it is Leo DiCaprio, who outdoes himself as DeNiro did in Raging Bull more than four decades ago. As to Scorsese's efforts to portray the cultural folkways and quotidian behaviors of the Osage people, this deserves an entire essay all on its own. Few Hollywood productions have more committed themselves to taking steps toward righting the innumerable wrongs of their industry in (mis)representing Native Peoples. I can't make a valid judgment of this because I am not an Indigenous person, but let us hope that what Scorsese et al. is at least a significant indication of change. The Native cast members bring beauty and dignity across the spectrum of those qualities. Yes, this story and others need telling by Indigenous filmmakers. As a Sicilian American storyteller, perhaps Martin Scorsese has found some areas of relatively common ground, uniting his urban turf of New York City with the mean meadows of Lily Gladstone's Mollie's Oklahoma.