This Image Is Important

Killers of the Flower Moon’s most famous production still — the subject of a whole meme life cycle — carries surprising weight in the context of the film. Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple TV+

This article was originally published on October 27, 2023. On January 23, 2024, Killers of the Flower Moon was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. Be sure to also read our review.

For almost two entire years, the only available image from Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon showed Lily Gladstone seated at a dining table, looking dotingly at Leonardo DiCaprio, though there’s something mildly unsettling about him. His mouth is bent into a half-frown and his eyes are puffy, almost glazed over, as he stares up at nothing in particular. His center-parted hair is messy, but in an intentional and calculated way, as if someone planted a villainous mustache on his forehead. The first-look production still was shot by Melinda Sue Gordon and released as a Vanity Fair exclusive in 2021, after which it became a familiar and feverishly dissected symbol of the film. Now that Killers of the Flower Moon is finally in theaters, audiences can finally see that image in context, where it’s revealed to be part of a surprisingly poignant moment shared between characters at a crucial juncture in their lives.

In the long lead-up to the release of Scorsese’s latest saga of violent greed, Apple did eventually throw a few more morsels our way — three new production stills dropped in late April — but by then “the table picture� had taken on a life of its own. “Begging the team behind KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON to release just, like, ONE other still. Just one. For the love of Christ,� tweeted podcast host Scott Wampler in the weeks before those new stills appeared. In response, A24’s social-media team cheekily tweeted another hyperfamiliar image: a medium close-up of Brendan Fraser in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, the only image people saw from that film for several months before its release, which sparked a similar meme life cycle last year. (“Does this movie only have one frame in it?� asked user @williamwannaw at the time.)

While that image of Fraser doesn’t technically appear in The Whale — it’s been digitally touched up to add a T-shirt — Killers of the Flower Moon’s table scene is very much intact, shot from an angle quite similar to Gordon’s photo. In fact, the entire scene builds to this very frame, as a kind of dramatic denouement. I was at the film’s first public screening at Cannes and heard murmurs and even hints of giggles when it became clear we were watching the scene, in which Mollie (Gladstone), with a flirtatious mix of impatience and amusement, puts a stop to Ernest’s (DiCaprio) advances when a storm comes pouring down. Water drips into the dining room through an open window, which Ernest attempts to close. But to his confusion, she tells him to leave it open and to come sit quietly as the rain rolls in. “The storm is … it’s powerful,� she explains, sitting still and compelling him to do the same. DiCaprio’s spaced-out look, it turns out, was Ernest absorbing something vast and mysterious about nature, while Gladstone’s doe eyes signaled not only affection but a knowing scrutiny as she susses out his intentions.

The scene unfolds mostly in close-ups of each character, leading up to this quiet two-shot as Ernest comes to show appreciation for Mollie and the Osage’s nature-revering beliefs. Whatever the reasons this frame was chosen to represent the film — whether random or intentional — recognizing its impending arrival makes the scene meta-textually effective, aligning viewers with Ernest’s POV. One might be tempted to point at the screen in recognition, DiCaprio–in–Once Upon a Time in Hollywood style, but the moment is built around a silent appreciation for nature, demanding a reverential stillness from the viewer, just as Mollie demands of Ernest.

Romantic as it might seem on the surface, however, the moment is also a turning point for the film — not least because of its sinister undercurrents. Mollie and the other Osage have oil money, and the film is about the casual white supremacy that allowed many Osage murders to go unsolved for several years. Ernest’s seemingly genuine adoration for Mollie comes laced with poison (literally — once they’re married, he dilutes her insulin with morphine), courtesy of his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), who gradually coaxes his nephew into helping murder Mollie’s entire family for their money.

In this context, the scene itself, now emblematic of the film for so many, becomes about cultural emblems: It’s bookended by a cowboy hat at the start and a wearing blanket at the end. Mollie welcomes Ernest inside her home for dinner after she gifts him a brand-new Stetson. Cinematically, the cowboy has been a heroic symbol for decades, while westerns have frequently demonized and dehumanized Native Americans. Scorsese inverts this typical dynamic in Killers of the Flower Moon, introducing the Osage to the audience by likening them to lavish stars of the silent era — through 4:3 black-and-white footage and intertitles — while anyone in a cowboy hat is likely involved in the genocidal conspiracy against them. Placing the hat on Ernest’s head herself as a gesture of intimacy practically marks Mollie for death, albeit through no fault of her own.

Mollie then dons her blanket, a cultural garb of the Osage that sometimes symbolizes history and tradition, for added warmth amid the stormy winds. But just as the cowboy hat highlights Ernest’s predatory intentions — if only in retrospect — so too does the wearing blanket identify Mollie’s vulnerabilities. The garb itself may be protective in nature, but her very existence as a Native woman puts her in immediate danger: As her sister Rita says to her later in the film, “This blanket is a target on our backs.� (At the time, blanket was also a derisive term used to describe Native women who married white men; Hale refers to Rita as her husband’s “blanket� while casually plotting her death.)

The scene therefore unfolds not only during a moment of intimacy but at a cultural crossroads. It exemplifies, through its framing and costume design, everything Scorsese is attempting to say with his Oklahoman epic about the treatment of the Osage and other Native peoples throughout American history, through a story of love and betrayal, and about the ways even those most familiar to us can have layers and dimensions previously unseen — not unlike familiar production stills we’ve spent years staring at online.