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Post by stephen on Oct 21, 2023 17:35:13 GMT
But if that happens, it legally goes to the children via Mollie's inheritance, which is the whole point of the law they're trying to circumvent. The best that could happen is Ernest signs a guardianship over to Hale in the event that he dies, but I think that would happen anyway considering Mollie (as far as I know) has no kin left, except I guess that couple that take in Anna 2.0 when she's sick, so if Ernest and Mollie die, Hale could easily just step in to raise the kids. He doesn't need him to sign any kind of document that wouldn't already be in place. It only makes sense that Hale was trying to get him to sign a life insurance policy, because we've seen him do that already with Henry (cinematic language rearing its ugly head again with repetition of theme). While it's a smart idea to limit your second's ambition, Hale is an old man. He doesn't have a son that we see ready to take the reins. And the way Byron acts in the film shows an almost slavish devotion that I don't think would be curbed by Byron marrying Anna. And if Hale wants to implicitly threaten Byron, he could force him to sign the life insurance proviso as well, just as a precaution. We see this same thing play out with Rothstein against the D'Alessio Brothers and Mickey Doyle in Boardwalk Empire (bringing the Scorsese connection), and it acts as a motivator for them not to step out of line. The thing is, the movie takes great pains to show that Byron and Anna had a thing going, but that he wasn't willing to make it official, and killed her for it. And I don't think it makes sense that Hale would allow for that. And there's ways they could show that it wouldn't work, either through infidelity or Byron maybe not being able to procreate somehow and makes him useless in that respect. But it just felt like rather than solely rely on a dumbass like Ernest, Byron could've done the same thing and gotten Hale his money in half the time. EDIT: I do want to add that at no point does the movie give us the impression Byron would flip or make a move on Hale anyway. He's dead to rights on murder accusations and doesn't roll. So applying some sort of logic to Hale not using Byron in his marriage scheme because he wants to limit his power/ambition doesn't bear out here. Well for an additional explanation, Anna was a loose cannon (with a literal loose cannon) so perhaps neither Hale nor Byron wanted to take the risk, therefore eliminate her off the table early. Although I'll also say I don't think Hale was concerned about a family empire a la Tywin Lannister, I think he just literally wanted all the money. Although I will say this is obfuscated a bit due to De Niro being much older than Hale was at that time. Anna was a loose cannon, but she was clearly in love with Byron and all it would've taken is her to get pregnant and survive long enough to give birth, before she did something stupid and get herself offed, and it wouldn't have raised suspicion. And even if it didn't work, Anna's still out of the picture. So there's no real risk there, unless Anna shoots Byron, but at that point, again, Hale's still got Ernest/Mollie as a backup and Anna's in prison (probably with no chance of inheritance). Logically, there's nothing that would or should've prevented this from being on the table. Hale's motivations are murky enough because most of his dialogue is family-oriented in some way, so whether you choose to take him at face value or not, the fact is the film doesn't really give us any sort of alternative reading. Because ultimately, he has access to the money whether directly or indirectly. And he seemed perfectly happy with the Ernest/Mollie situation until he learned Ernest bought a farm without his consultation. And even so, the film doesn't even really explore how Hale would even get all that money if it wasn't a family empire. He needed proxies like Ernest that he could control for the scheme to work. The life insurance was just that: insurance in case he needed to whack Ernest for being sloppy. The Dawson aging of De Niro and DiCaprio (who is much closer in age to Hale was at the time of the murders than Ernest) was absolutely a distraction, but De Niro immediately sidestepped it because I think it made sense that he was a man in his twilight years desperate to get things in order for when he was gone, which is why I think there was genuine familial feelings with Byron and Ernest because he needed to know that his empire would succeed after he died. It's just that he started seeing Ernest fuck up in real time that it got to the point he had to work out alternative angles just in case. But yeah, DiCaprio was a good twenty years too old for that role and it really shows now. It's frustrating because Plemons was in the movie and he would've been perfect, because we've seen him play roles like this to a tee and he's in the right age bracket.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Oct 21, 2023 20:19:17 GMT
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havok2
Junior Member
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Post by havok2 on Oct 21, 2023 22:02:30 GMT
Sorry, but all the lukewarm takes can piss off. I'll have more thoughts later but this was absolutely staggering. The fact that it's angering the right people, it means Scorsese has again accomplished pleb filter. It's hilarious that chuds are whining about this being anti white and woke when it's about a literal serial murder
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Post by countjohn on Oct 21, 2023 23:16:56 GMT
Saw this late last night (it was a long night) so I am getting around to writing about it now. Good, not great. Lower end top ten Scorsese maybe and will probably be around the same position for the year as a whole. Solid script, good cinematography, and near career best stuff from De Niro. It's time for one of our best actors to get Oscar no. 3. Leo I think is fine, but I do agree with some of the criticisms. He either needed to go into full movie star charm mode like Catch Me If You Can or they needed to get someone frumpier to do it. Stephen's Jesse Plemons suggestion was interesting, easy to see him doing it if they went the "simple country boy who gets manipulated" route. As it stands Leo seemed too dumb to have gotten away with it for as long as he did but still too smart to get played the way he was. It was neither here nor there. I also thought his big crying scene at the end seemed fake and bad. Gladstone is also fine, maybe she sneaks into the back end of my actress lineup but I certainly don't see it as a "performance of the year" as the hype indicated. We're talking about unintentional laughter with this. I started laughing at the Mason lodge scene but I was the only one laughing in a crowded theater so I tried to stop. There was uncomfortable laughter and a guy yelling "jesus christ" when Leo is trying to get the guy to kill someone and is reluctant until he says it's an Indian and he says "that's different" sounding relieved. Fraser is extremely hammy (on purpose) and funny as well. Scorsese seems to really hate lawyers. I did like the ending- I think the point was to highlight how obscure the event became despite being a relatively important historical event. It was just a episode on some kitschy true crime radio show, and it seemed a deliberate choice that they switched to that for the epilogue while basically saying everyone forgot about it later. The Scorsese cameo was distracting though. 8/10
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Oct 21, 2023 23:32:32 GMT
I guess I'm just gonna be the one to say it: DiCaprio backslid pretty hard into his old habits here. This was an extremely affected performance that, from the very start, made me think of Sling Blade's Karl Childers the whole way through. Every acting choice felt deliberate and unnatural, and considering he's the focal point of the film, it sets the film off on a bad path from the start. And it really is a shame, because the rest of the ensemble (bar an insanely over-the-top Brendan Fraser, who bellows his Oscar prestige like Pavarotti to the cheap seats) is pretty ironclad. Gladstone imbues a powerful dignity to her character, and frankly I think this is the best De Niro's been since Goodfellas. Both would be worthy enough winners on their own merits. Now, on to the elephant in the room when it comes to the perspective on the Osage. I think there's definitely a lot to compliment Scorsese on when it comes to anchoring the Osage's views and focus points throughout the film (the scenes with the tribal council were some of my favourites in the movie), but the bigger issue to me is how the film treats the character of Mollie herself. Specifically, her relationship with Ernest. Because I could not understand how this woman could fall for that Cletus the slack-jawed yokel routine that DiCaprio was putting on. I did not buy their relationship as portrayed for a moment, and considering how she watches her family get decimated one after the other when the evidence is clearly mounting as to who the guilty parties are, we don't see much conflict in her on having to reconcile her love for her husband with the suspicions she must harbour. The development of the relationship fell flat, and considering that is the axle on which this film turns, it's a bumpy ride for nearly four hours. But it's a hell of a scenic route that we take on that ride. The craft behind the movie is top-notch, particularly Jack Fisk's production design and Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography. I wasn't overly crazy about some of Thelma's choices in the third act, where the narrative sort of peters out, but the film never drags or feels much of its runtime. In short, I thought it was very strong but its flaws are readily apparent, and it largely boils down to a miscast lead and a relationship that does not get the proper care and focus it should to make it believable in the confines of the story Scorsese is telling. Hell, I think Jesse Plemons would've made a far more appropriate casting for Ernest, both in age and skill at playing naive bumpkins. Probably a weak argument on my part but I assume that she fell for him because she was sick most of the time and wanted some sort of affection. She probably knew deep down that Ernest is bad news(anyone with any sense would). But he's quite dull and comes off endearing so maybethat's why she fell for him and fooled herself from facing the obvious truth Also I thought that DiCaprio's "extraness" actually worked for this film cause Ernest doesn't really have much going on up there. He's a man who lives purely on instinct, lacking any sort of subtlety in anything he does. I had no problem with Molly falling for him. It’s 1918 Oklahoma in an oil town. I don’t think she was going to do much better. He is gorgeous by oil town standards and his intelligence was probably about par for the course. As for her not catching on sooner that she was being poisoned take it up with Molly herself. If the book was accurate, which I images it is, this is pretty much exactly how it went.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Oct 22, 2023 4:42:33 GMT
I want to talk about two scenes that I thought were so well done and got great reactions from the crowd.
*The woman that was shot while pushing the stroller. Several gasps at that one. Set up very well by having the first several deaths just being corpses laying in beds. In a theater with everybody expecting a lot of bloodshed to still catch everybody off guard like that was brilliant
* the second appearance of the owl. Don’t think I have to explain this one. Perfectly set up and got a big reaction
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Javi
Badass
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Post by Javi on Oct 22, 2023 4:58:11 GMT
I guess about a 6/10. The first hour is triumphant, with Scorsese and Prieto determined to outdo their work on Silence. We’re used to this kind of swirling camerawork in his Mafia movies, but in this Western setting, it takes your breath away, and he gives us crowd scenes so vibrant that the Covid era feels well and truly over. It’s killer filmmaking all around—the silent-era documentary reconstructions, the introductions to each main character, the first appearances of the Osage. And at the heart of it all there’s Lily Gladstone. I was worried that we’d get a Terrence Malick-like Native American heroine, a Virgin Mary-Pocahontas type. But there isn’t the slightest cliché or trace of holiness in Gladstone’s initial interpretation. Her Mollie can be brutally funny, even outright mocking. She seems aware of the white man’s every conceivable vice and looks perfectly equipped to deal with them. (She owns DiCaprio with ease). She’s also a sexual creature and, despite her apparent Catholicism, doesn’t seem to link sin to lust. There’s a richness and a fullness to her acting that, added to the quality of the filmmaking, had me expecting some kind of masterpiece.
Something goes wrong somewhere in the second hour, when the movie loses its exuberance and becomes The Irishman Part II. Mollie becomes so sick that she’s relegated to some kind of deleted Cries & Whispers subplot, suffering and receiving injections for the last three hours of film. It’s not just the character who becomes sickly... Gladstone’s performance is wiped out. Every time Scorsese cuts to her cramped little room, I immediately wanted to leave it. The problem isn’t that Gladstone is too “subtle”. It’s simply that she has nothing to do but wither and waste away. Mollie becomes an embodiment of every noble suffering Indian trope Gladstone had demolished in that first hour. She may be the “heart” of the movie but it’s a wan and feeble heart. And in her final confrontation with DiCaprio, when you expect to see her inner tensions rising up to the surface, nothing happens. She’s been dead too long, dramatically and otherwise.
It's obvious that Scorsese is primarily (and hopelessly) drawn to DiCaprio’s character. (The Osage only interest him in the first hour). It’s really damn hard to share his enthusiasm. It feels like we’ve seen all that DiCaprio can do as a dramatic actor. He looks desperate, his scowl having taken over his entire face. He’s playing yet another of Scorsese’s moral idiots, and four hours of this guy is simply too much for me. He seems to be eating the screen. As a comic Satan, Robert De Niro fares a lot better. For a while, it feels like a classic De Niro performance, until he becomes a little too invincible, a little too obvious (like everything else in the film). My favorite performance is by a character actor, Ty Mitchell (according to IMDb, a cowboy and rancher), as a guy utterly fed up with violence and killing yet utterly incapable of saying “no” to a new murderous offer. He’s so hopeless that he befriends the Indian he’s supposed to kill, then kills him in a manner opposite to the one intended. His little tragicomic vignette has more authenticity than most of the movie.
In The Irishman, the point of the plot was that the individual plot points didn’t matter, that all this torrent of activity was futile, absurd. The only thing at stake was De Niro’s soul, and he didn’t much care about selling it. That all worked very well for the aim of The Irishman and considering the kind of film that it was. But when this absurdism becomes the mood of Flower Moon, something isn't right. Corpses pile up over and over and over again, but the movie isn’t remotely interested in the Osage as people, and it’s only tangentially interested in their suffering. We keep watching DiCaprio and De Niro plot the next assassination, with sickly hospital visits to an emaciated Gladstone, and limp council scenes where the natives declares their will to go to Washington for aid. The natives are duped over and over. Apparently, none of them have the intelligence or the instinct that Mollie (and her mother) initially showed. The way Scorsese stages Mollie’s arrival in Washington (it’s all over and done with in about a minute), the impression is that he considers Mollie a fool for even bothering with Washington in the first place. It’s just another bit of poetic “absurdity”.
In the fourth (!) hour it morphs into a courtroom drama, which made me feel like I was watching Oppenheimer all over again. (At this point, I’d rather watch a movie set in a latrine than in a courtroom). This section is interminable, and thank god for Brendan Fraser hamming it up and embarrassing himself. Again, it isn’t as if what DiCaprio is doing is so much better, anyway.
This movie deserved to be more than another study in moral idiocy or the meaninglessness of existence. Four hours pass and we learn nothing about the Osage. Someone brings up the fact that the Osage women only (or mostly) marry white men. It’s a fascinating subject, but Scorsese doesn’t care, and it’s never brought up again. We learn that Mollie has an Osage husband, but her feelings in relation to him are hardly touched on. We see that Mollie is a Catholic, and this is full of dramatic and religious potential. Nothing is made of it. Scorsese has made an epic about the attempted extermination of a people, not about the Osage as people (or as anything other than victims of fate). His teary-eyed bit at the end or the half-hearted attempts at Osage mysticism don’t seem enough compensation.
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Post by wallsofjericho on Oct 22, 2023 5:03:30 GMT
I want to talk about two scenes that I thought were so well done and got great reactions from the crowd. *The woman that was shot while pushing the stroller. Several gasps at that one. Set up very well by having the first several deaths just being corpses laying in beds. In a theater with everybody expecting a lot of bloodshed to still catch everybody off guard like that was brilliant * the second appearance of the owl. Don’t think I have to explain this one. Perfectly set up and got a big reaction Great scenes. I do love the just listen scene with Gladstone and Leo and the calmness of it.
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Post by Billy_Costigan on Oct 22, 2023 5:48:53 GMT
That wouldn't have worked with Hale, imo. Hale gets him on the team precisely because he's an idiot (he was a nobody in the army and he's easily manipulated). He can be a charmer the way a few idiots can be, but in no way should Mollie have stuck with him that long knowing what was happening, because she knows that Ernest and Hale are behind it. Does she? I think she's suspicious of everyone but the problem is she doesn't know anything for certain. Making it fairly logical she wouldn't leave Ernest right away at least. I thought this was pretty clear. She's suspicious of Hale but doesn't know Ernest is involved. She tells the doctors to go away and makes sure Ernest is the one to give her the insulin because he's the only one she trusts. Hale is shocked they are having another baby because he thinks Ernest is only in it for the money at that point. Ernest is genuinely surprised at his reaction and says that's what happens when people love each other. It may have helped if we (the audience) saw more of it on screen but it shows they did have a good relationship.
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 22, 2023 9:19:27 GMT
I once joked that Jessie Buckley always looks like she's about to burst into tears - well Lily Gladstone often looks - at first -like she is about to tell you the sweetest joke ....her smile is - mysterious and knowing - which creates a cruel paradox - she knows - and she can not do anything about the knowing........when DiCaprio berates her - in a way that will have people who accuse him of overacting ripping their hair out ...........Gladstone's smile turns off and she willts and collapses into him in the saddest manner........in a scene brilliantly staged by Scorsese in a dimly lit, small room that feels like the walls closing in........Gladstone's face souring, damaged and almost zombie-like is the image of this movie........ Martin Scorsese often makes movies about either the banality of evil.........or the necessity of evil - but here he makes a movie about the inevitability of evil - and that both allows him a great historical canvas and some big filmmaking problems to put on it. The movie - terrifically acted and impressively mounted - is dazzling at first - but the big canvas is also so big the movie hits its biggest problem - the narrative shape is compromised - logy, with connecting scenes that feel burdensome that seep in after the set-up - a lot - as the runtime drags on. It's early on when you notice Scorsese's playfulness - the way Gladstone doesn't take DiCap's hand at first (almost scoffs) and a very great scene with DiCap & De Niro where De Niro pretty masterfully is introduced to us and to him as his friend, family and a wise sage ( You didn't pick up any diseases did ya? You like women?) - but that can't sustain and when the real darkness comes - often, excruciating and endless - it throws the movie and its pacing off........so much so that the order of the scenes seems less important for what came prior where it was exacting. The Irishman was long but purposely so - but KotFM feels padded and where The Irishman was about a witness to history that built to a devastating ending in its last hour - KotFM is about history grinding down a movie so it can not build to an ending that is anything other than a repetition of what we already know.. Still - the best parts of KotFM are (by far) the best American movie of the year that I've seen so far - it's just a matter of where the total piece delivers for you. Much of this movie is staggering on a tech level - and in many ways evokes Days of Heaven specifically imo. ..........much of this movie's flaws like the flaws in Goodfellas and WoWS will be overlooked by many........the very ending is more worthy of Spike Lee than Scorsese tbh............unnecessarily didactic For the Great Man's full length non-docs for me: Taxi Driver Mean Streets The Irishman
King of Comedy After Hours
Raging Bull Wolf of Wall Street / Goodfellas Killers of the Flower Moon
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Post by stephen on Oct 22, 2023 12:32:21 GMT
My favorite performance is by a character actor, Ty Mitchell (according to IMDb, a cowboy and rancher), as a guy utterly fed up with violence and killing yet utterly incapable of saying “no” to a new murderous offer. He’s so hopeless that he befriends the Indian he’s supposed to kill, then kills him in a manner opposite to the one intended. His little tragicomic vignette has more authenticity than most of the movie. Ty Mitchell should be getting Harry Dean Stanton roles. I thought he was fantastic.
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Post by Joaquim on Oct 22, 2023 21:41:58 GMT
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Oct 23, 2023 0:38:41 GMT
I know some have mentioned the unintentional comedy (Frasier) but there was some very dark intentional comedy here.
“Not if it’s illegal”
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Post by stephen on Oct 23, 2023 0:47:11 GMT
I know some have mentioned the unintentional comedy (Frasier) but there was some very dark intentional comedy here. Now I am imagining Frasier and Niles getting enlisted in Hale's scheme.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Oct 23, 2023 0:51:34 GMT
I know some have mentioned the unintentional comedy (Frasier) but there was some very dark intentional comedy here. Now I am imagining Frasier and Niles getting enlisted in Hale's scheme. Someone on Twitter said that Frasier was playing a Coen Brothers character in a Scorsese movie and it was perfect.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Oct 23, 2023 1:04:29 GMT
I just realized me and Lily Gladstone were in the same college at the same time! She got there one year before me. Never met as far as I know.
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Oct 23, 2023 3:59:47 GMT
Damn. A staggering achievement.
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Post by finniussnrub on Oct 23, 2023 23:26:22 GMT
Anyone else feel Scorsese was directly evoking this scene with the guy dancing near the railroad station scene?
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Post by stephen on Oct 23, 2023 23:27:20 GMT
Anyone else feel Scorsese was directly evoking this scene with the guy dancing near the railroad station scene? I was thinking the dude from Days of Heaven who dances on the board (and later with Linda Manz).
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Post by pacinoyes on Oct 23, 2023 23:52:58 GMT
There's a lot of similarities to Days of Heaven imo - it's burnished look, the duplicity of intent and relationships .....man destroying God's Paradise (Malick's thing always) - there's enough money for everyone to live in Paradise in KotFM.....but alas no.......the pacing issues in both - which in Days of Heaven tries to get swerved by the narration but that only makes it weirdly rushed and slow..... There's that (great) scene I mentioned in my review where DiCap berates Gladstone and she collapses into him in a devastatingly sad way and where the shape of the room suggests the walls closing in around Mollie that is very Malick-like in its sparseness......there are shots that you could swap out....... particularly dialog shots.... On the other hand Days of Heaven has only 2 deaths in it iirc and is like 90 minutes or something
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Post by finniussnrub on Oct 24, 2023 0:01:11 GMT
Well for an additional explanation, Anna was a loose cannon (with a literal loose cannon) so perhaps neither Hale nor Byron wanted to take the risk, therefore eliminate her off the table early. Although I'll also say I don't think Hale was concerned about a family empire a la Tywin Lannister, I think he just literally wanted all the money. Although I will say this is obfuscated a bit due to De Niro being much older than Hale was at that time. Anna was a loose cannon, but she was clearly in love with Byron and all it would've taken is her to get pregnant and survive long enough to give birth, before she did something stupid and get herself offed, and it wouldn't have raised suspicion. And even if it didn't work, Anna's still out of the picture. So there's no real risk there, unless Anna shoots Byron, but at that point, again, Hale's still got Ernest/Mollie as a backup and Anna's in prison (probably with no chance of inheritance). Logically, there's nothing that would or should've prevented this from being on the table. Having gone back and reading the sections on Byron in the book, I guess the truth is he just didn't want to? in reality that is. As Byron is recorded in history as having been in a relationship with Anna, but not trying to marry her. So guess it is an avenue that Hale simply ignored? Or maybe Byron was cool with an affair but not a marriage with an Osage woman?
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Post by stephen on Oct 24, 2023 0:05:40 GMT
Anna was a loose cannon, but she was clearly in love with Byron and all it would've taken is her to get pregnant and survive long enough to give birth, before she did something stupid and get herself offed, and it wouldn't have raised suspicion. And even if it didn't work, Anna's still out of the picture. So there's no real risk there, unless Anna shoots Byron, but at that point, again, Hale's still got Ernest/Mollie as a backup and Anna's in prison (probably with no chance of inheritance). Logically, there's nothing that would or should've prevented this from being on the table. Having gone back and reading the sections on Byron in the book, I guess the truth is he just didn't want to? in reality that is. As Byron is recorded in history as having been in a relationship with Anna, but not trying to marry her. So guess it is an avenue that Hale simply ignored? Or maybe Byron was cool with an affair but not a marriage with an Osage woman? I understand that in reality there might've been an explanation, but that hardly matters when it comes to the cinematic portrayal. It just feels weird to entrust the entirety of the family scheme to Ernest when Byron was right there as a much more reliable person who had no issues dispatching Anna when the time came, and I feel they could've at least alluded to the reason why marrying Anna wasn't an option when it seemed Byron was happy to do anything and everything Hale asked of him. (Also, the real guy's name was Bryan, not Byron, so clearly they were happy to take little liberties when and where they could.)
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Post by finniussnrub on Oct 24, 2023 0:13:07 GMT
Having gone back and reading the sections on Byron in the book, I guess the truth is he just didn't want to? in reality that is. As Byron is recorded in history as having been in a relationship with Anna, but not trying to marry her. So guess it is an avenue that Hale simply ignored? Or maybe Byron was cool with an affair but not a marriage with an Osage woman? I understand that in reality there might've been an explanation, but that hardly matters when it comes to the cinematic portrayal. It just feels weird to entrust the entirety of the family scheme to Ernest when Byron was right there as a much more reliable person who had no issues dispatching Anna when the time came, and I feel they could've at least alluded to the reason why marrying Anna wasn't an option when it seemed Byron was happy to do anything and everything Hale asked of him. (Also, the real guy's name was Bryan, not Byron, so clearly they were happy to take little liberties when and where they could.) Well I will disagree there, reality is reality. And if that is what happened, I don't think you have to explain it away, particularly when Byron is a side character. His name was Byron but he went by Bryan. Like Joe/John Merrick with the Elephant Man.
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Post by stephen on Oct 24, 2023 0:17:18 GMT
I understand that in reality there might've been an explanation, but that hardly matters when it comes to the cinematic portrayal. It just feels weird to entrust the entirety of the family scheme to Ernest when Byron was right there as a much more reliable person who had no issues dispatching Anna when the time came, and I feel they could've at least alluded to the reason why marrying Anna wasn't an option when it seemed Byron was happy to do anything and everything Hale asked of him. (Also, the real guy's name was Bryan, not Byron, so clearly they were happy to take little liberties when and where they could.) Well I will disagree there, reality is reality. And if that is what happened, I don't think you have to explain it away, particularly when Byron is a side character. His name was Byron but he went by Bryan. Like Joe/John Merrick with the Elephant Man. Meh, reality is reality but this is a film. It's a logistical thread of Hale's scheme that stuck out in my mind, especially considering how much the film focuses on Anna (and, consequently, her relationship with and murder by Byron) and Hale's emphasis on getting access to all the sisters' money. A throwaway line would've tied it up. But it's fine if it didn't bother you, but it did for me. As did numerous other little peccadilloes, but I've said my piece on this one. As for the Bryan/Byron, I'll take the hit here. Although the dude's middle name was Badford, and that sounds like a rad movie title.
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Oct 24, 2023 2:15:50 GMT
Having seen it, I greatly admire the perspective the movie took and feel it is the better one, at least in terms of interrogating the themes that Scorsese is exploring. Having the movie from Mollie's perspective would invite audience identification with her. But this isn't about having white people relate to and feel sorry for Indigenous peoples (almost certainly while thinking "well, I am not those bad white people" or "at least it's not like that anymore"), this is about exploring how willing people are to be complicit with evil when they think it'll benefit them. It's all about the stranglehold of white supremacy and an inversion of the Cowboys vs. Indians Westerns that Scorsese grew up watching and loves.
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