Osage Nation leader Chief Standing Bear shared the press conference stage with Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone.
Director Martin Scorsese was flanked by stars Leonard DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone on Sunday during the Cannes Film Festival press conference for Killers of the Flower Moon, his epic period drama — based on the nonfiction best-seller by David Grann — about the notorious “Reign of Terror” that targeted newly oil-rich Osage Native Americans in 1920s Oklahoma.
The previous evening, Cannes festivalgoers had responded with a nine-minute standing ovation after the world premiere screening of the Apple Original Film. (Paramount will open the movie in a limited theatrical run on Oct. 6 before expanding on Oct. 20.) Critics were scarcely less enthusiastic in early reviews that flooded the internet Saturday.
But chances are good that Scorsese was most impressed by the reaction of another person who shared the press conference stage with him on Sunday: Osage Nation leader Chief Standing Bear.
DiCaprio appears in the true-life drama as Ernest Burkhart, the tragically pliant nephew of William Hale (De Niro), a ruthless cattleman who involves his nephew in a land-grabbing scheme that would eventually claim dozens of Osage victims. Among the endangered: Burkhardt’s wife Mollie (Gladstone), an Osage woman who has inherited an oil fortune.
Jesse Plemons co-stars as Tom White, a former Texas Ranger turned agent for the newly formed FBI, who leads an investigation into the Osage murders. In early drafts of the script he co-wrote with Eric Roth, Scorsese placed greater emphasis on White. But that was before Scorsese visited Oklahoma to scout locations — and confer with Osage Nation representatives.
“Early on,” Chief Standing Bear said Sunday at Cannes, “I asked Mr. Scorsese, ‘How are you going to approach the story?’ And he said, ‘I’m going to tell a story about trust. Trust, trust between Mollie and Ernest, trust between the outside world and the Osage, and the betrayal of that trust, deep betrayal.’
“And my people suffered greatly. And to this day, this very day, those effects are with us. But I can stay on behalf of the Osage, Martin Scorsese and his team have restored trust and we know that trust will not be betrayed.”
Throughout the making of the film, DiCaprio added, “We were talking to community, trying to hear the real stories, and trying to incorporate the truth as best as we possibly could. And no matter what people feel about the film, I know we all did that work. We tried our very best to pay respects to the real stories and incorporate that.”
Here is the Cannes Film Festival press conference for Killers of the Flower Moon.