Do all masterpieces look the same, in the way that Tolstoy once posited all happy families do? After seeing The Eras Tour and Killers of the Flower Moon back to back, I can definitively say that no, they do not.
The film version of Taylor Swift’s mega-hit, record-breaking concert tour and Martin Scorsese’s opus on the murder of members of the Osage people in the 1920s are as inextricably linked as Barbie and Oppenheimer were this summer. Both are long, clocking in at three hours and 26 minutes for Killers and two hours and 49 minutes for Eras. Both were released in mid October, and are currently the top two movies at the box office, raking in millions of dollars each. The words used in both of their overwhelmingly positive reviews are largely interchangeable: try figuring out which was called “astonishing” versus “a juggernaut”, “epic” or “a phenomenon”. Killers of the Flower Moon and The Eras Tour are testaments to their talented orchestrators, each working at the top of their game.
They are also polar opposites, in a very Barbenheimer way: one is a sparkly, cotton-candy pop bonanza, and the other is a sure-to-be-Oscar-winning retelling of a particularly dark, racist moment in US history. When it was clear that they would be in theatres at the same time, how could you not think of the double-feature potential?
So, I watched both in one day: six-plus hours in a movie theatre seat on what was supposed to be a rainy Saturday in New York. I began with Killers of the Flower Moon, with the mentality that it would be easier to pump myself up for Eras after watching such a serious movie, rather than try to get serious after dancing to T-Swift. With my husband in tow and a giant bowl of popcorn in my hands, I settled in for three and a half hours.
What can I say? You already know it was excellent. While the run time didn’t fly by, exactly, it was engrossing. Not a single minute was wasted. Lily Gladstone was spectacular, Leonardo DiCaprio (and his fake, historically accurate teeth) acted his heart out. I kept thinking about the rich, culturally specific costume design, especially the Pendleton blankets that the Osage women wear throughout the movie. (Costume designer Jacqueline West had over 1,000 of them made.) I left the theatre in a daze. As you may have guessed, this is a film that you should sit with a bit – one that lends itself to long conversations parsing out every single detail. Especially that ending. That ending!
But no time for that – I was on to Taylor Swift. After a brief break between showings, when I took a bath and tried to avoid screens and any kind of media, I returned to Alamo Drafthouse for The Eras Tour. I was curious how the theatre (famous for its no phone, no talking policies) would handle Eras. In fact, they lifted the no talking policy, and specified that, yes, you were able to sing along during the concert. Phew. They even had special T-Swift cocktails on offer, such as a Bad Blood Rita, Ranch Water on My Guitar, and Prosecco Problems. I got a Devil’s Dice – a reference to the “Cruel Summer” lyric “devils roll their dice, angels roll their eyes” – which was essentially a strawberry lemonade spiked with vodka and garnished with an umbrella. Later in the concert, I switched to the virgin version, Angel’s Eyes. (I blame both for the headache I woke up with the next day, more so than the screens.)
Anyways, I settled into the Eras Tour film with another giant bowl of popcorn and my friend, who had attended the real thing. Next to us was a very excited Swiftie girlfriend and her very compliant boyfriend. We were maybe the rowdiest quartet in the theatre, dancing and singing along (quietly) in our seats. As a tried-and-true Swift fan who first saw her way back in 2006, when she opened for Rascal Flatts, I was primed to at least enjoy the mega-concert. Yet I was surprised by just how fun it was. My friend told me that the actual tour and movie were two different experiences: at Eras, you couldn’t really hear Taylor sing. The crowd’s screaming and singing drowned out her voice. In the film, on the other hand, you can hear her sing. You can also see all the intricacies of the production – the special effects, the back-up dancers and singers. It was cool to see the costumes up close as well. The sparkly blazer dress she wears for “The Man” has Versace’s Medusa logo on the buttons; her back-up dancers wear absolutely stunning black puff-sleeve dresses during the Folklore set; her nail polish chips somewhere around the Speak Now section.
Still, flashes of Killers of the Flower Moon kept coming to me in the middle of Taylor’s performance. My mind would wander back to Osage county and Mollie and Ernest Burkhart’s story. This is less a knock on Swift and more a testament to Scorsese’s storytelling, the stickiness of Killers – it can penetrate even the earworm that is “Blank Space”. Part of what we’ll chalk that up to is seeing so many TikToks of the Eras tour, and 17 years of listening to Taylor Swift at least once a week. As someone who doesn’t really put on “We Are Never Getting Back Together” or “Bad Blood”, I wished I could have skipped through some of the songs. But by the time “Karma”, the finale, started, I was jazzed and singing as if it were the first song all over again.
Not to bring in a third movie, but you know that opening scene in Lady Bird where Lady Bird and her mum finish listening to the audiobook of Grapes of Wrath, and they get into an argument because Lady Bird wants to listen to music immediately afterward, whereas her mum wants to sit in silence and mull over what they’ve just heard? And Lady Bird opens the car door and rolls out onto the road instead of continuing to fight? That’s how I felt throughout the day. It’s really worth sitting with each movie on its own. As it turns out, masterpiece epics can take very different forms.
