Why did Killers Of The Flower Moon leave the Oscars empty-handed?
Scorsese's epic about the Osage murders didn't win a single Oscar last night, but that doesn't mean the film won't endure
The tone was set for Killers Of The Flower Moon from the very beginning of last night’s Oscars ceremony. “Your movies were too long this year,” host Jimmy Kimmel quipped in his opening monologue. “When I went to see Killers Of The Flower Moon, I had my mail forwarded to the theater. Killers Of The Flower Moon is so long, in the time it takes you to watch it, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders yourself.”
Director Martin Scorsese, or—far more importantly—the fact that those 206 minutes depicted the horrific and systemic violence leveled against Native Americans in our country were not mentioned once. Kimmel did give “Robert [De Niro]’s co-star” Lily Gladstone a shoutout for her historic achievement of being the first Native American woman ever nominated for an Oscar, but even that was used to set up a hollow joke about murder hornets, of all things.
Considering this attitude, it wasn’t all that surprising that KOTFM took home zero awards last night, but it is galling. Scorsese’s epic was undoubtedly one of the best films of the year. Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio (who wasn’t nominated nor in attendance), and De Niro all gave stirring performances as Mollie Burkhart, Ernest Burkhart, and Ernest’s smarmy uncle William Hale respectively, while actors like Tantoo Cardinal and Cara Jade Myers, who perfectly portrayed Mollie’s murdered family, didn’t receive as much as a peep this award season. The movie was gorgeous and important and yes, long, but at three hours and twenty-six minutes it was only twenty-six minutes longer than Oppenheimer—the night’s big winner—and earned its runtime by tackling a topic as weighty as genocide. There’s no other way around it: KOTFM was snubbed, and unfairly so.
Three theories of why Killers Of The Flower Moon was shut out
While we’ll never know for sure, there are a couple of factors that could have contributed to KOTFM’s terrible night. The easiest to argue—and one many on the internet already have—is that most of the roughly 10,000 voting members of the Academy aren’t the biggest fans of Martin Scorsese. The director has been nominated 16 times and won only once, for The Departed in 2006. His last film, 2019's The Irishman, was nominated for ten awards and also completely shut out the Oscars. The motivation behind this indifference is less clear. Do newer voters think he’s pretentious or that watching his art is like “homework,” as one Twitter/X user suggested? Have his Marvel comments actually pissed that many people off? We’ll probably never know, but it’s certainly an odd look for the Academy.
The second potential explanation is that a lot of people put KOTFM and Oppenheimer in the same mental bucket (both filled the “legendary director, historic biopic, long Oscar bait film” niche), and Oppenheimer just edged out KOTFM in most of its categories. We’re not here to debate whether those wins were justified or not—Oppenheimer was obviously also a huge, well-crafted project—but it would explain why films like Poor Things and Anatomy Of A Fall that were both so visually and tonally different seemed to generate more of their own buzz.
The third and most challenging potential explanation is that KOTFM forced audiences to reckon with a far stickier legacy than some of its peers. Oppenheimer took on a similarly shameful moment in American history but didn’t actually show it on screen. Holocaust film The Zone Of Interest took home two very deserved awards last night (Sound and International Feature Film), but as of this writing director Jonathan Glazer’s speech decrying the violence in Gaza is still not available to watch on the Oscars YouTube page. (The Academy did not immediately respond to The A.V. Club’s request for comment on this.) While cinema can be used to reflect society, sometimes people would rather not look in the mirror.
What does this mean for Killers Of The Flower Moon’s legacy?
Even if the Oscars are Hollywood’s biggest night, they’re certainly not its only night. While getting a statue is nice, it doesn’t make or break the success of a director or actor. Plenty of great movies didn’t win a single Oscar and even more snubbed actors have gone on to incredible careers. Lily Gladstone may not be this year’s Best Actress, but she’ll be back. The late Robbie Robertson’s score was an all-timer and the Osage Singers’ performance of “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” last night was a wonderful moment of representation, even if it was brief. By the time the 2025 Oscars roll around, few will remember that John Cena was naked or that Ryan Gosling brought Slash up on stage for his performance of “I’m Just Ken.” But they will remember Killers Of The Flower Moon.