Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh.
I went into this film cold, I didn’t know much about it and the only other feature I’d seen from McDonagh was In Bruges (2008). The film clearly carries the same razor sharp sense of brutal humor, the same goes for the director’s other feature, Seven Psychopaths (2012).
This is not a spoiler-free review so read on with caution if you haven’t seen the film.
I really loved this movie and I was surprisingly moved by it. It touches on so many themes; sexual politics, religion, police brutality, grief, and revenge. The film is also truly hilarious, I found myself laughing out loud several times in the theater (which was surprisingly full for a late Friday night showing in my small college town), at the same time it manages to straddle that hair-thin line of humor and sadness beautifully. This balance is achieved through a careful back and forth of emotion and writing. The comedic moments are exaggerated at times, but the film is no worse off for it. While the emotional moments are kept balanced on the more internal end of the acting spectrum. It’s this level of restraint that causes the emotional pain, we only really see Mildred (Francis McDormand)cry once in the film’s two hour run time. When we finally do see her breakdown she is planting flowers near the billboards and she sees a deer grazing in the field nearby. She begins talking to the deer, saying that she doesn’t believe in reincarnation. She says the deer is pretty, but not as pretty as her daughter was. Only here does she breakdown into tears. You can feel the pain and pressure of time as Mildred finally lets herself cry. This is such a small and deeply personal moment in the film, it stands out in my mind so clearly, I can remember nearly every detail of the scene. I was actively fighting back tears. There are a few other moments in the film that manage to pull a lot of emotion out of you, but nothing compares to the scene with the deer in my opinion. It’s probably the most emotional scene I’ve seen in a film so far this year.
The film deals with loss in a very open and personal way. Mildred wants the three billboards up on display to shame the police into making a more active effort in finding her daughter’s murderer. This shows a kind of open grief, Mildred is finished with the internal grief, by putting up these billboards she’s telling everyone in the town that she is not giving up and that she is finished hiding her grief. This makes her internal emotions public, and in turn it almost purifies her grief. It purifies it because she has dealt with it internally, now she is taking the next step and making it all public, mainly because she wants justice done, but also because she has the other goal of freeing herself from holding it all inside. This dynamic alone is extremely compelling in the film. It shows genuine loss in a way that is not morbid or exhibitionist. These billboards and Mildred’s violent actions are her outlet for her grief. Violence, in this film, is a metaphor for grief turned outward. She wants justice in some shape or form, and we see early on in the film that she will settle for nothing less.
I would just like to digress for a moment and talk about the blocking in the film. The blocking of this scene (pictured below) is particularly interesting. The scene between Mildred, Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), and (for part of the scene) Dixon (Sam Rockwell), taking place after Mildred’s incident with the local dentist. The blocking here is interesting because at no point in the scene does one character take more screen space than the other, and there are no instances where one is placed in a position of power over the other(s), except of course when Willoughby forces Dixon out, he becomes small in the frame. It might not seem that big of a deal, seeing as it is clear that power is evenly distributed, especially between Mildred and Willoughby. However I feel this distinction is important to point out because of the deeply ingrained gender dynamics present in the film. It shows a woman being of equal power as two men, both of whom are technically in a position of authority over her. Blocking does more than just communicate basic power dynamics within an isolated scene, it serves as a point of reference for the entire film.
There are other instances of interesting blocking in the film as well, like when Mildred and James (Peter Dinklage) are at dinner together. In this scene the two are also shown as equals in terms of blocking, which is interesting when one considers the dynamics of the date they are on. Mildred does not really want to be on the date, and James is the one who instigated it. So there is clearly an emotional imbalance in the scene, but the situation under which Mildred said yes to the date (James is her alibi for when she blew up the police station) gives them a more equal power balance. There is also the scene where Willoughby is talking to Mildred outside her home, she is seated on a swing (pictured below), and he is standing. The two characters go through some subtle shifts in power balance in the scene.
It begins with Willoughby taking more space (having more power) while Mildred is seated lower on the swing. Willoughby bends down to be more on-level with her while she retains strong eye contact. He is in a place of power as a police officer and she is in a place of power because she is the only one who can take the billboards down. These scenes I have outlined here go far beyond just the male-female dynamics often present in movie blocking, it transcends the overall situation and the blocking is dynamic throughout. While this is not specific to this movie, I feel that Three Billboards takes its blocking one step further in terms of execution and dynamic meaning. It draws the audience’s attention to the blocking, instead of it remaining a kind of peripheral thing, by doing this you are made to think more deeply about the scene and the subtle actions of the characters.
Three Billboards shows a much more realistic and harsher side to grief incited rage. Mildred puts up the billboards as her first act, she refuses to take them down even after the local priest and her own son voice their disagreement with the billboards. We see right away that these billboards hold as much a public agenda as they do a personal one. Even after Willoughby’s death she refuses to take them down. She essentially has the whole town against her, including her ex-husband. The billboards get attention and news coverage, and a possible suspect is even discovered at a local bar. But reality being reality, and this film never shies from it, all of it proves to be for not, and the real killer is never discovered. The film denies its audience and Mildred the satisfaction of justice, and it goes against our insatiable need to know the answers. It would almost go against the grain of this film if the real killer was discovered and justice was properly served, because that is not how it always (or hardly ever) works out in the real world. But revenge is still within Mildred’s grasp. The suspect that the police do end up finding was bragging about raping a women (which is what happened to Mildred’s daughter). So while this is not her daughter’s murder/rapist, he still is a rapist. Mildred and Dixon take justice into their own hands, deciding to drive off and find this man. It’s a form of closure and justice for Mildred, even though it might be misguided. By the end of the film we are sympathetic to her and we, at least I could, end up endorsing these actions. But something interesting happens at the end of the film. Dixon and Mildred are driving and they ask each other the question of whether they are making the right decision in going to kill this man. Mildred replies saying that they can decide on the way there, its a long drive. This ending might not make sense at first, seeing as all we have of Mildred is that she definitely wants revenge. This simple line of dialogue shows such a huge amount of change in Mildred’s character. Just in this short closing scene we see her reconcile with the police via the involvement of Dixon, we see that her and Dixon are on better terms because killing this man was his idea in the first place, and we see her finally letting her grief go. She has arrived at an emotional state where she might not need revenge anymore. While we will never know this for sure, because the film does not tell us if they go through with it or not. It shows a character changing in a very subtle, yet profound, way. I really loved how effective and simple the ending of this film was.
I highly recommend seeing this film if you haven’t already. I really loved it and I would definitely see it again. It was so amazing to see Francis McDormand on screen playing a powerful female character once again. I am a huge fan of her performance in Fargo (1996) so I particularly enjoyed seeing her on screen. The whole film had a really great cast, seeing Harrelson and McDormand together on screen was a particular treat, the two had such a great balance during their scenes together. I was disappointed when the line of questioning between Mildred and Willoughby ended because they were both full of such combative energy. The music from Carter Burnwell and cinematography, by Ben Davis, was really amazing as well and their work really helped everything in the film to mesh together (Both men also worked on Seven Psychopaths together). The music fit the location and dynamically complimented and contrasted the tone of the film whenever it saw fit. While the color and composition was really breathtaking in certain moments. The opening shot of the three billboards, for example, will be stuck in my mind for quite a long while. The shots of the characters playing pool (pictured above) in the bar was also stunning in its usage of color and light. There are several other shots in the film that I fell in love with but I don’t have nearly the time to list them all here.
I will hopefully be getting back to doing reviews more regularly after finals week and the Christmas Holiday. Look forward to a review on A Ghost Story (2017) and Lady Bird (2017) in the near future. I took a bit of a break from blogging because of school work and personal reasons, but I’m back and ready to start writing more often (hopefully). Also stay tuned for a new review series I have in the works, details to be revealed later.
