#like regardless of the state of ernest and mollie's rl relationship which nobody can know but them

[mermaidsirennikita]

Have you ever shared your thoughts on the romance in Killers of the Flower Moon?

There was a viral tweet a few days ago discussing how the emphasis on the marriage was borne out of Scorsese learning that Ernest insisted until his dying that that he really loved her, and Mollie’s real-life descendants also telling him they too believe that they were truly in love.

I went into a bit of a rabbit hole reading interviews with the cast and the IRL descendants and it was so disturbing and tragic (like Ernest really did learn to speak Osage, which was apparently highly unusual for white spouses). It’s also interesting to me that neither of Mollie’s sister had children with their white husbands, but she had three with Ernest. Like theirs was sincere relationship, and not one primarily because of mutual convenience. (Yet he also named his youngest daughter after her aunt, who he helped murder.)

I’ve seen pushback to the romantic relationship in the movie (“that’s not love,” “love isn’t abuse”), which is understandable, but also IMO a bit simple and naive/childish? I guess it kind of depends on whether one thinks love is inherently good, which I don’t think it is.

Anyway, I thought the film’s depiction of Mollie/Ernest was fascinating and devastating. I thought Lily and Leo had fantastic chemistry too.

I think Ernest did love her (or believed that he did), yet his love was worthless because it didn’t protect her or make him do the right thing. I thought Scorsese was basically asserting that love actually cannot “redeem” anyone or overcome evil/greed/bigotry.

I agree with your assessment on Scorsese's intent with that relationship, for sure, and I think that there is an understandable desire to categorize feelings and relationships into one thing or the other. When it comes from the Osage today (not that there's a universal "Osage take" on this movie, but I've seen a couple Osage critics go "that was not a relationship with any love in it"), I think that's a large part of healing, and I get where it comes from, and I respect it. I think that there is sometimes a need, not a universal need, when you have experienced trauma and abuse, to put certain feelings into boxes. It's self-protective. And I speak from experience, right? I've been processing emotional abuse from someone I loved for years, and it has only been fairly recently that I've been able to unravel the relationship in a way that isn't "this person must not have loved me because otherwise how could he treat me that way".

When it comes from random twitcrits, I think it's more indicative of not only that, but some larger issues that we're dealing with societally. I think we often try to "science-ify" or pathologize feelings in a way that we really can't. Because if we can say "this person did this thing, that means they're incapable of love", "abusive behavior of any kind means that person does not ever love you", "this disorder means this person can't love", it's easier to feel like we're capable of safeguarding ourselves from threats. If we can identify it, we can protect ourselves, and when someone does X, Y, and Z, we can identify them as a wholly malevolent force and predict their behavior and prescribe behaviors in terms of how to react to them.

Personally? I think it's a lot more complicated than that. In terms of Ernest and Mollie in particular, a lot of what people who have a more personal understanding of that situation seem to say, as you've pointed out, they appear to have been in love. Now, I don't think anyone can know what was going on for Mollie except Mollie, and Ernest obviously had reason to claim he was in love with her whether or not he was. Their descendants cannot look at it clear-eyed. All of his behavior could have many motivations.

The thing is, though, that it's absolutely possible to love someone be horrible to them. HORRIBLE. Because humans are capable of being many things at once, and compartmentalization is SO real. To me, it seems impossible to say that every abusive individual, even every monstrous individual, carried no love ever for people... even the people they hurt. And it also seems to assume a lot about what we can divine about people without living in their minds.

I also think that it challenges us on several fronts. First off--we can think someone is absolutely evil and that, in a world where the law can be trusted, would deserve a fate like death (to be clear: I'm anti-death penalty, but I understand the desire to punish certain people to that extent)... But how much does it shake our sense of morality and our justness when we admit that those people are capable of love? I mean, it doesn't for me, but I think it does for many. You want to be able to say "there is nothing good in this person" because it's just easier to accept. It is much, much more horrifying to think "this person is evil and also can love" versus "this person is evil". To be evil is human, but the way our societal morality is structured makes many feel otherwise; but nobody would argue that to love is human. So acknowledging that someone can love in any way humanizes these evil individuals in a way that is DEEPLY uncomfortable.

Because, as you said, it does separate this idea of love from goodness. Love is not inherently good, it's not inherently healthy, and it's not inherently ENOUGH. Someone can genuinely love you. But why does them loving you automatically mean that they love you MORE than their greed, MORE than their desire to destroy, MORE than their wrath? There's nothing in the bylaws of love that says so. That's just a romantic concept we've put onto all types of love, imo.

ALSO: perhaps scarier is the idea that someone can love and can also murder, and abuse, and do heinous things. So how can we identify a dangerous person? If someone like Ernest really loved Mollie, then someone like your dad could also be capable of murder. Someone like your husband could be capable of abuse. It's kind of a terrifying thing to think of, because I think that a lot of people like to live in this world of "Well, that would never happen to me/I would recognize the signs". Not always out of a sense of superiority, but because it feels SAFER and more comforting to think that you would pick up on these aberrant behaviors, desires, whatever.

I always think about what my mom used to say to me--"I am 99.9999999999% sure that X person would never do X thing, but you have to leave that sliver of space for them doing it". And you DO. Because if you don't, then if that thing happens, you may not catch it. That incredible, bulletproof confidence? Leads to scenarios in which you fail to recognize or even live in denial of what's going on around you.

So.... we're left to live with that sliver of ambiguity. And humans often do not like ambiguity. You live in the ambiguity that technically, someone can betray everything you think you know about them; and you live in the ambiguity that someone that hurt you horribly could also have had genuine love for you, and it wasn't healthy, and it wasn't good, and it wasn't ENOUGH, but it was there. I've lived in that second thing, and it is hard. And I've also been the person who would swear 100% that I could trust someone, only to be proven wrong.

This doesn't mean that you can't love and trust and believe in people. It just means that life is really about BELIEVING in people, and not ever knowing 100% where their mind is, what the future holds, what they'll do. I think that now more than ever, that makes people feel so unstable.

This is all very theoretical and long-winded, but yeah. I think that is what Scorsese was trying to get across. That love can exist in bad relationships and horrible people, and it's not always redemptive, and it's not always enough, and it cannot stand up to the kind of avarice and bigotry that we saw in Killers. And isn't that horrifying? Isn't it scary?