Devery Jacobs has watched Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and has “strong feelings” about the film.
In a thread shared on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the Reservation Dogs star said the “film was painful, grueling, unrelenting and unnecessarily graphic.”
“Being Native, watching this movie was fucking hellfire. Imagine the worst atrocities committed against yr ancestors, then having to sit thru a movie explicitly filled w/ them, w/ the only respite being 30min long scenes of murderous white guys talking about/planning the killings,” she posted.
Jacobs called Lily Gladstone “an absolute legend” for her role of Mollie adding, “All the incredible Indigenous actors were the only redeeming factors of this film. Give Lily her goddamn Oscar.”
She continued, “But while all of the performances were strong, if you look proportionally, each of the Osage characters felt painfully underwritten, while the white men were given way more courtesy and depth.”
Jacobs goes on to talk about the violent scenes in the film understanding that it “is to add brutal shock value that forces people to understand the real horrors that happened to this community.”
“I don’t feel that these very real people were shown honor or dignity in the horrific portrayal of their deaths,” she added. “Contrarily, I believe that by showing more murdered Native women on screen, it normalizes the violence committed against us and further dehumanizes our people.”
“I can’t believe it needs to be said, but Indig ppl exist beyond our grief, trauma & atrocities. Our pride for being Native, our languages, cultures, joy & love are way more interesting & humanizing than showing the horrors white men inflicted on us.”
Jacobs called out non-Native directors centering the story on “the white perspective and focus on Native people’s pain.” Although she does acknowledge that it’s good that this story is being told, she would have preferred an Osage filmmaker be given the $200 million budget to tell their own story.
Read all the posts Jacobs shared below.
