Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1513564
Set in 1921 in northern Oklahoma, the film is a story of greed, corruption, and rac- ism after the discovery of oil under Osage Nation land transformed the region into one of the wealthiest areas in the country. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a returning World War I soldier ensnared in a scheme concocted by his uncle, William Hale, a nefarious cattle baron played by Robert DeNiro. The emotional centerpiece is the rela- tionship between the Osage woman Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and Ernest, who starts as her chaueur and eventually marries her. Like Scorsese's Netflix epic "The Irish- man" (2019), this new Apple Original film is a historical epic with a three-and-a-half-hour running time. In an interview with CineMontage, Schoonmaker talks about the challenges of finding a balance between the film's vi- olent historical context and its more subtle family dynamics. CineMontage: How did you prepare for this daunting material? Thelma Schoonmaker: Of course, I read the book, and that is filled with infor- mation. I learned many things through the process as I was going. I was given books, for example, on the very interesting ways Osage dress for weddings. The women wear this military outfit, which is something that happened when they first encountered white people. They probably admired the look of the epaulets. Things like that I learned as each scene came up. It was the same with pipe at the beginning, and the drums at the end. The drums are so important to the Osage. They actually consider the drum a person, and the keeper of the drum is a very special person who is carefully chosen. Then it's handed from person to person as people get older. I was learning all of that with each scene. CineMontage: How did you decide to weave in the other narrative blocks, like the illustrated Osage book, the use of photographs and film, or the intertitles? Schoonmaker: Marty knew right away that he wanted to use the black-and-white scenes, which were shot with actual silent cameras by [cinematographer] Ellen Kuras. The idea of using silent film footage in the beginning, once the oil was discovered, was to reproduce exactly as a newsreel of those days would have looked. It was shot by Ellen Kuras with a silent film camera using black-and-white film stock. Marty even owns one of the cameras. He always knew that, instead of a dierent way of explaining what happened, which may be lengthy and maybe not as interesting, that he wanted to use the silent film as a way to let people know what happened and not spend a lot of time on it. Marty said, "I'm not making a docu- mentary about the Osage. I'm making a film about two people who are in love with each other." CineMontage: One of the most striking cuts happens early, with an overhead shot and Mollie's voiceover as we see these tableaux of sorrow, violence, and loss. Thelma Schoonmaker: That was kind of a daring thing we did with Mollie's voice there. We haven't seen her yet. We don't know who she is. Hearing a woman's voice over these men who have died, and women who have died, and there's been no investi- gation of it as a criminal act — hearing that female voice is such a shock. CineMontage: The movie is a marriage story. The key question is how authentic Ernest's love for Mollie is. How does the cutting color that ambiguity? Schoonmaker: DiCaprio was originally going to play the FBI man. What happened was once he decided to play Ernest, both he and Lily helped Marty revise the script and make the love story the central theme of the movie. You might wonder, but most people tell me they completely believe the love story, which is the way wonderful actors do it. An FBI agent asked Mollie, "Why are you stay- ing with him?" She said, "I love him." The actors make it that way. Leo is wonderful at improvisation. There's the scene where Mollie calls him over to the bed. He's been watching Blackie steal his car, the stupid plot that the two of them came up with. She said, "I don't know if you love me SEE PAGE 74 44 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E PARTNERS: Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker. P H OT O : A P