Last week I found myself bored at the ridiculous run time (three hours plus) of the new film Killers of the Flower Moon. At the same time, I was mesmerized by the small independent film Exemplum, which runs at one-third the length of Flower Moon. Budget? $10,000.

You read that correctly. Exemplum, a black-and-white movie written, directed, produced and starring a gifted young filmmaker named Paul Roland, was made for the cost of a used car. It’s not a perfect film, and yes, the low budget shows, but overall this is a captivating spiritual drama that asks the big questions about God and the nature of evil.

Martin Scorsese, the director of Killers of the Flower Moon (budget: $200 million) has a long history of addressing both the lives of men who defy moral codes, only to descend in the end into tedium. He also has made Catholic films with themes of spiritual struggle, like Silence. Yet with the raw and well-written Exemplum, Paul Roland has made a better Scorsese movie than Scorsese’s own Flower Moon.