Cannes audience laud Scorsese-DiCaprio epic Killers of the Flower Moon
The premiere of Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed Native American crime epic 'Killers of the Flower Moon' took place in Cannes on 20 May.
The three-and-a-half-hour movie sees DiCaprio play alongside Scorsese's other long-time muse Robert De Niro, and chart a wave of murders among oil-rich Osage Indians in the 1920s and the birth of the FBI.
Fans went berserk as the trio came for the premiere alongside numerous Native Americans wearing traditional attire after spending hours waiting in the pouring rain that has blanketed the French Riviera town all week.
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Co-star Jesse Plemons arrived with his wife Kirsten Dunst, while Salma Hayek, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire were also present.
Based on a nonfiction bestseller, the film sees DiCaprio play a weak-willed man who marries a wealthy Osage Indian and is drawn into the deadly schemes of his kingpin uncle (De Niro).
Words like "searing", "triumph" and "masterpiece" were bandied about by critics who managed to get their hands on a ticket.
IndieWire said DiCaprio gives "his best-ever performance", while The Guardian awarded five stars for a "remarkable epic about the bloody birth of America".
There were some dissenting notes, with The Times calling it "a damp squib" and Little White Lies saying Scorsese "guts the story of anything that might sully the high seriousness of the subject matter".
It is the first time the 80-year-old Scorsese, who won the Palme in 1976 for "Taxi Driver", has presented a film here since 1985's lesser-known "After Hours", though he served as jury president in 1998.
Critics were near-unanimous in their praise, Variety calling it "chilling and profound, meditative and immersive, a movie that holds human darkness up to the light and examines it as if under a microscope".
