Filmmaking as Penance

Notes on Absolution in The Curse and Killers of the Flower Moon

As the season finale of The Curse concluded earlier this year, I found myself pondering not only obvious connections to Kafka and Buñuel, but also Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Both involve their creators attempting penance for past sins.

Killers concludes with a hockey radio show which acknowledges that tragic stories—like the preceding one in which women of color are killed by greedy men—are frequently turned into lurid entertainment for consumption by largely-white audiences. A “having your cake” paradox is created with this epilogue—it could read as mildly disingenuous to deliver an entertaining gangster picture and then tack on a brief apology acknowledging the limitations of the form in telling these stories. On the other hand, Scorsese appears to be sincere, and during its year-long Oscar campaign, beginning with its Cannes premiere a year ago, much has been made regarding the screenplay’s transition into something that more centers the Osage people’s experience. The radio show ending acknowledges that even the best laid intentions come with limitations, especially within this particular artform that so often foregrounds entertainment elements. (It’s the “Entertainment” in the “Arts & Entertainment” section after all.)

In the world of television, Showtime’s The Curse has co-creator/co-lead Nathan Fielder continue his examination of Reality TV’s inherently exploitative nature. This observation isn’t as complex as anything Killers is up to, but Fielder has always been more creative in execution. After four seasons (and one spinoff feature) of Comedy Central reality show Nathan for You, Fielder’s follow up The Rehearsal ended with a controversial finale that explored the unintended exploitation of child actors. Its critics argued that the ends didn’t justify the means, but I found Fielder’s provocations to be a breakthrough, going beyond the cringe comedy of Nathan for You.

If you ask five people what The Curse is about, you’d likely receive five different answers. It’s intentionally overstuffed. I’ve previously written about this category of narratives (and plan to in greater depth in the future) and have dubbed them “Cinema of Monumental Obfuscation.”

So while The Curse is about gentrification, fear of fatherhood and more, a central thread involves Asher (Fielder) and his wife Whitney’s (Emma Stone) exploitation of the New Mexico town of Española for their own personal gain. The onscreen sins of the couple are more egregious than anything Fielder is guilty of in Nathan for You or The Rehearsal. This amplification within a fiction narrative places Fielder’s ongoing role in exploitation for entertainment more front and center.

An interesting wrinkle to Fielder’s ongoing penance project is the inclusion of Benny Safdie as co-creator/co-star. Alongside brother Josh, Benny has built a career making provocative independent films. Last year, a Hollywood Reporter exposé detailed allegations from a young non-actor who felt exploited by her nude audition for their film Good Time. Unorthodox working methods can lead to situations where clear ethical boundaries are crossed. Even when the pair graduated to big league filmmaking with Uncut Gems, they still retained some elements of their commitment to pushing limits. I’m thinking of the story of how they cast an important role late into the night, mere hours before shooting, after Josh met a man in a casino.

Somewhere around Good Time, their first collaboration with A24 which starred A-lister Robert Pattinson, you see a change in how Josh and Benny discuss their work. 2014’s Heaven Knows What was a scrappier picture and at the AFI Fest premiere they casually talked about people OD’ing mere feet from where they were shooting. This was radical filmmaking and there was pride in how they discussed their boundary-pushing. But larger studios and larger budgets lead to savvy publicists, and the two have unsurprisingly become more careful with how they talk process. This is not an uncommon development—there is just much more to lose as one ascends.

A a reality TV producer in The Curse, Benny Safdie’s Dougie makes no bones about his duty to create an on-set environment that fosters misunderstandings and drama. And if this can’t be achieved, it can be crafted in the edit bay. His lack of moral qualms contrasts Whitney and Asher who prefer to lie to themselves about their altruistic aims. Similar to Fielder, Benny’s role in the The Curse can be read as an acknowledgment of the manipulation required to get the good stuff, the authentic stuff, to transpire in front of the camera.

I can’t help but sense that the Safdies' penchant for pushing limits is largely a feature not a bug. What is lost when one forgoes a creative risk they wouldn’t have hesitated to take earlier in their career? This question extends to the documentary community today, which I see as split in two categories: On one side are the academic documentarians whose projects are largely funded through non-profit grants. These filmmakers are often too preoccupied with ethical implications—it can be the only question. This can stifle instinctual filmmaking and lead to a neutered project. On the other side are the largely streamer-led “documentaries” which, like Benny’s Dougie, actively seek out the sensational. This category is market-driven and so if the audience is there (and it is), then they will continue to make work that blurs the line between reality TV and documentaries. I sense the academic side of the documentary community can stand to move slightly closer to the middle, taking more creative risks with their projects.

It’s worth noting that penance is a Catholic concept. While Fielder and Safdie are Jewish, guilt is a key component of all western religions. Since the very beginning with Mean Streets, Scorsese has worked out his Catholic faith (and guilt) on screen. The conclusion of Killers of the Flower Moon has Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio) finally confessing his sins, first privately to his uncle William Hale (Robert DeNiro), the prison bars between them mirroring the lattice that separates confessor and priest in a traditional confession booth. Then his confession becomes public as he takes the witness stand against his uncle. Earnest’s wife, Molly (Lily Gladstone) is present in the courtroom, listening to her husband admit to his role in murdering her sister, among other heinous acts.

However, his confession does not include his systematic poisoning of Molly. Knowing this, Molly graciously grants Ernest one last chance to confess, asking him if he has anything else he needs to tell her, post-hearing. He cannot bring himself to admit to the poisoning and with that Molly leaves him forever. In that moment, Molly’s love for Ernest is still present, and she seems willing to forgive him of his transgressions, should he have confessed this final sin. In a very Catholic way, Scorsese is saying that there is no halfway confession. Absolution can only be obtained if you confess all of your sins, not 90 percent as Ernest did. Thus, Ernest faces condemnation, losing Molly and facing a stiff jail sentence—it’s a heartbreaking conclusion, having to bear witness to just how close Ernest came to receiving forgiveness.