Sightlines · reception
How Killers of the Flower Moon was received
2023 · Martin Scorsese · Killers of the Flower Moon on Sightlines
The arc
Premiered at Cannes 2023 to a nine-minute ovation and rode into awards season as a presumed juggernaut — then went a stunning 0-for-10 at the Oscars, with Lily Gladstone's Best Actress loss to Emma Stone still one of the most relitigated results of the decade. The film's stature hasn't dipped, but its awards shutout has become part of its story.
What’s debated
The forever-debate is perspective: should Scorsese have centered Mollie and the Osage rather than DiCaprio's Ernest — with the 206-minute runtime (and the great 'should theaters bring back intermissions?' discourse of 2023) running a close second.
Its footprint
It gave awards season one of its defining moments — Lily Gladstone accepting her Golden Globe partly in the Blackfeet language — and the runtime kicked off a genuine mainstream argument about intermissions returning to cinemas. DiCaprio's dim, jutting-jawed Ernest became instant meme material.
Where it stands
Instantly slotted into the late-Scorsese canon alongside Silence and The Irishman — a Letterboxd heavyweight treated less as a question of 'is it good?' than 'where does it rank?'
Did you know? The script originally centered on the FBI investigation, with DiCaprio set to play agent Tom White — Scorsese and DiCaprio scrapped years of work to refocus the story on Ernest Burkhart, and Jesse Plemons took the White role instead.