The wedding may be the most important scene in Killers of the Flower Moon

About a third of the way through Martin Scorsese’s slow-building epic Killers of the Flower Moon, we witness the marriage of Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio). Mollie arrives at the wedding in 18th-century American military garb over layers of handmade Osage beadwork and woven fringe. Other guests and wedding attendants are similarly attired in magnificent and ornate clothing and accessories. It is a glorious feast of color and costume, meticulously recreating Osage wedding customs from 1920s historical records. It is an unforgettable moment in the three-and-a-half-hour film and a beautiful example of how carefully the creative team, which included many Osage advisers and skilled craftspeople, attempted to capture this moment of Osage and US history.

For all the scene’s historical veracity, it also feels like a fantastical counterhistory to the stories we associate with this era. White characters willingly and joyfully embrace Osage ritual practices, chanting, singing, and clapping along with the rite. In the history of most encounters between Native Americans and European Americans there are few examples of this kind of ritual flexibility on the part of White people. Native practices were largely scorned or actively destroyed through assimilation policies. In this wedding ritual we glimpse an unexpected world where two different cultures appear to be equals of a kind, attempting something like genuine exchange.

Even as we watch, we know it is a counterhistory in a darker, more devastating way. The film is an adaptation of the book of the same name by journalist David Grann, which tells the story of the unprecedented wealth the Osage acquired in the early 20th century when oil was discovered on their reservation, and the systematic, widespread conspiracy by White settlers in Osage territory to manipulate and murder them for their wealth.