I liked this film much more than I thought I would, and watching it made me think fondly of a friend and fellow cinephile who passed away recently and who was a huge Martin Scorsese fan. We used to have lively discussions about whether his long-time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, ever really edited anything from their films, since they're always sooooo long.
This latest from Scorsese, DiCaprio, and De Niro was no exception at 3.5 hours, but we divided it into two chunks and conquered it on Sunday. The first section was excellent and portrayed a complete inversion of what white people in America had come to expect as their birthright. The Osage with oil money, in their finery and jewels, with white maids and butlers, had to have driven white society nearly mad. It's no wonder they were sitting ducks, waiting for the voracious appetite of settlers and grifters to steal what hadn't already been stolen.
The second part starts once the (newly formed) FBI steps in, and is more familiar (and less interesting). There were definitely some issues with structure and narrative, and it could have been an hour shorter, yet it's still an excellent Scorsese outing and an exemplar of vision, mood, and technical precision, though not brevity. Alas.
This latest from Scorsese, DiCaprio, and De Niro was no exception at 3.5 hours, but we divided it into two chunks and conquered it on Sunday. The first section was excellent and portrayed a complete inversion of what white people in America had come to expect as their birthright. The Osage with oil money, in their finery and jewels, with white maids and butlers, had to have driven white society nearly mad. It's no wonder they were sitting ducks, waiting for the voracious appetite of settlers and grifters to steal what hadn't already been stolen.
The second part starts once the (newly formed) FBI steps in, and is more familiar (and less interesting). There were definitely some issues with structure and narrative, and it could have been an hour shorter, yet it's still an excellent Scorsese outing and an exemplar of vision, mood, and technical precision, though not brevity. Alas.