Delirious_Beard posted...
honestly the fact that the film was still so compelling despite all that is why it's so great. i don't think it needed to be some murder mystery about who did what, scorsese's objective with making this film was very clear, to shine light on something largely unknown, and showcase the kind of people capable of it. the tracking shots in the aftermath of the atrocities committed are some of the most devastating and effective i've seen in a movie in years
I agree. Saw it last night and expected to have to pause it halfway through and come back to it, but I never lost interest or felt overwhelmed by it, it kept my attention. It's kind of like Titanic... everyone knew what was going to happen, but the presentation makes you stick around anyway. Except this movie was even more real because it was based on real people ,whereas the two main characters in the former were fiction and the historical figures were side characters.
Like Mollie said, it was just like Tulsa, and like the Tulsa race riots, I had no clue any of this happened... it was never taught in school. I didn't learn about the events in Tulsa until years after I graduated and found an online article about them. I didn't know about the Osage murders until I saw this movie.