☆☆☆☆☆
Anger begets greater anger, one of the characters says in Martin McDonaugh's shockingly funny and starkly sad film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Well, she doesn't say it so much as it's related that she said it, and she can't take credit for the wisdom because she read it in a book -- well, on a bookmark in a book.
Still, she's proud of the words, and still what they say about anger is true. Just ask Mildred Hayes, whose daughter Angela went out to meet some friends nine months ago when she was raped and set on fire just under a trio of billboards within eyesight of the Hayes residence.
What does that kind of unthinkable violence do to a mother? That's part of what Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, wants to explore, but the bigger question is: What does it do to everyone? What does that sort of scream in the night, that slap in the face of decency and humanity do to the world? Whether or not McDonaugh and everyone involved with Three Billboards knew it when they were making the movie, Three Billboards proves to have powerful resonance in today's violent, profane, angry, divided, ridiculous world.
The pain inflicted by whomever killed Angela Hayes has left almost everyone in Ebbing, Missouri, feeling violent, profane, angry and divided themselves -- the ridiculous is just along for the ride, as it always is in life. No one is hurt more than Mildred, who is played by Frances McDormand in one of the great performances of the year, certainly, and maybe the decade. She can't get past the idea that Angela's killer walked off into the night and was never caught or heard from again. Unsure what to do with her rage, she rents the billboard above the place of Angela's murder, and two more nearby, and erects a harsh message to the local police chief.
Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson, who's also spectacularly good) is enraged, of course. But he gets it. How could he be angry at Mildred when the stunt gets exactly the results it wants: It turns the attention of the chief and the town back to the murder that they hoped they had moved beyond. Mildred's son (Lucas Hedges) is a little less forgiving, and police officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is demonstrably more so.
Though her intent was to rip open her own raw wound, in fact what Mildred does is tear the sutures from the whole damned town, and it pretty soon it looks like the whole place is infected with anger, resentment and recrimination.
Against this dramatic setup, Three Billboards does something extraordinary: It finds reasons to laugh. It's one of the most consistently and frequently inappropriately funny movies of the year, filled with a cast of characters who are less quirky stereotypes than almost uncomfortably rich and full-blooded humans. There are racists and homophobes (this being small-town America), people who have unrequited crushes on each other, people who have their own theories about what happened, people who keep secrets about the way they are, the way they think, the things they feel.
As the town lines up both for and against Mildred, her challenge to the police is a defining moment for everyone involved, when they have to accept what they've done, defend their actions, or make some serious changes in their lives. The police chief is the most obvious target, but it turns out there are a lot of lesser targets, too, ones Mildred didn't even know she was aiming for.
Yet it's Chief Willoughby who looms largest in all of it. The crime happened on his watch, and so did the failure to find the murderer. Harrelson strikes a wryly nonplussed sort of tone early on, but then McDonaugh's screenplay throws a curveball, which it follows up with an even more unexpected twist, and pretty soon we're as confused as anyone in the movie.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, begins with a setup that seems straightforward and pulls back the layers of normalcy (even weird, ridiculous normalcy) one by one, until we realize there's nothing at all straightforward about any of it, and whatever answer we thought might be forthcoming is not going to be easy at all.
There's an absurdist streak running through Three Billboards that is similar in tone to McDonaugh's supremely underrated In Bruges, which is also startlingly violent and profane. That film played off of the sweet, peaceful image of a European storybook to great effect, but there's something even more disarming about Three Billboards and its depiction of American small-town views. It's no surprise that underneath the tranquility of an American town lingers unpleasant truths, and Three Billboards hits on the expected elements of racism and violence. Then it goes deeper, into individual hearts and minds, exploring the anger that seethes under a calm exterior.
Yet it never once loses its sense of humor, both about the story at hand and about humanity in general. It is, as one character muses, as if there is no God and it doesn't matter what we do to each other, in which case we're all really screwed.
Or maybe not.
And that is the glimmer in this wonderful movie's eye.
Viewed November 12, 2017 -- ArcLight Hollywood
1145
Still, she's proud of the words, and still what they say about anger is true. Just ask Mildred Hayes, whose daughter Angela went out to meet some friends nine months ago when she was raped and set on fire just under a trio of billboards within eyesight of the Hayes residence.
What does that kind of unthinkable violence do to a mother? That's part of what Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, wants to explore, but the bigger question is: What does it do to everyone? What does that sort of scream in the night, that slap in the face of decency and humanity do to the world? Whether or not McDonaugh and everyone involved with Three Billboards knew it when they were making the movie, Three Billboards proves to have powerful resonance in today's violent, profane, angry, divided, ridiculous world.
The pain inflicted by whomever killed Angela Hayes has left almost everyone in Ebbing, Missouri, feeling violent, profane, angry and divided themselves -- the ridiculous is just along for the ride, as it always is in life. No one is hurt more than Mildred, who is played by Frances McDormand in one of the great performances of the year, certainly, and maybe the decade. She can't get past the idea that Angela's killer walked off into the night and was never caught or heard from again. Unsure what to do with her rage, she rents the billboard above the place of Angela's murder, and two more nearby, and erects a harsh message to the local police chief.
Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson, who's also spectacularly good) is enraged, of course. But he gets it. How could he be angry at Mildred when the stunt gets exactly the results it wants: It turns the attention of the chief and the town back to the murder that they hoped they had moved beyond. Mildred's son (Lucas Hedges) is a little less forgiving, and police officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is demonstrably more so.
Though her intent was to rip open her own raw wound, in fact what Mildred does is tear the sutures from the whole damned town, and it pretty soon it looks like the whole place is infected with anger, resentment and recrimination.
Against this dramatic setup, Three Billboards does something extraordinary: It finds reasons to laugh. It's one of the most consistently and frequently inappropriately funny movies of the year, filled with a cast of characters who are less quirky stereotypes than almost uncomfortably rich and full-blooded humans. There are racists and homophobes (this being small-town America), people who have unrequited crushes on each other, people who have their own theories about what happened, people who keep secrets about the way they are, the way they think, the things they feel.
As the town lines up both for and against Mildred, her challenge to the police is a defining moment for everyone involved, when they have to accept what they've done, defend their actions, or make some serious changes in their lives. The police chief is the most obvious target, but it turns out there are a lot of lesser targets, too, ones Mildred didn't even know she was aiming for.
Yet it's Chief Willoughby who looms largest in all of it. The crime happened on his watch, and so did the failure to find the murderer. Harrelson strikes a wryly nonplussed sort of tone early on, but then McDonaugh's screenplay throws a curveball, which it follows up with an even more unexpected twist, and pretty soon we're as confused as anyone in the movie.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, begins with a setup that seems straightforward and pulls back the layers of normalcy (even weird, ridiculous normalcy) one by one, until we realize there's nothing at all straightforward about any of it, and whatever answer we thought might be forthcoming is not going to be easy at all.
There's an absurdist streak running through Three Billboards that is similar in tone to McDonaugh's supremely underrated In Bruges, which is also startlingly violent and profane. That film played off of the sweet, peaceful image of a European storybook to great effect, but there's something even more disarming about Three Billboards and its depiction of American small-town views. It's no surprise that underneath the tranquility of an American town lingers unpleasant truths, and Three Billboards hits on the expected elements of racism and violence. Then it goes deeper, into individual hearts and minds, exploring the anger that seethes under a calm exterior.
Yet it never once loses its sense of humor, both about the story at hand and about humanity in general. It is, as one character muses, as if there is no God and it doesn't matter what we do to each other, in which case we're all really screwed.
Or maybe not.
And that is the glimmer in this wonderful movie's eye.
Viewed November 12, 2017 -- ArcLight Hollywood
1145
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