Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has been nominated for six oscars — HOW?!

SPOILERS CONTAINED IN THIS ARTICLE.

In the age of #metoo we should be doing much better than this film. Women and girls deserve much better than this film, which by the end feels like a validation and vindication of toxic violent masculinity.

As the Awards Season hots up, best film contenders jostle for our cinema cash and actors prepare their acceptance speeches. But one film I hope has no chance at utilizing those speeches is Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. The film charts the attempts of a woman to keep her daughters’ brutal rape, torture and murder in the headlines so that local police take it seriously and act on the case.

Many commentators have pointed to the films’ sloppy nod to racism in small town America; some have even accused the film of being racist due to the eventual validation and redemption of a leading racist character, Officer Dixon, played by Sam Rockwell. Whilst this clearly needs to be addressed I have chosen to angle my vitriol towards the presentation of women and that thoroughly oppressive tool of male misogyny — violence against them. In the age of #metoo we should be doing much better than this film. Women and girls deserve much better than this film, which by the end feels like a validation and vindication of toxic violent masculinity.

Though on the outset, a film about catching the perpetrator of a violent rape, torture and murder of our token dead female Angela Hayes — represented throughout the film as a scorch mark in some grass underneath three billboards — daughter of Mildred Hayes; the film ends up as a redemptive character arc of its most toxic white male: Officer Dixon.

Expectations are high at the beginning of the film that we will find out who has raped and murdered Angela; however, as a controversial last act, the film chooses not to provide resolution. Instead, the two main characters, Mildred and Officer Dixon ride off into the distance with the intent on killing a man who wasn’t “our rapist” but “a rapist”. With this (edgy?) twist the effect is to push the story of the raped girl into the realm of background noise. In fact, all acts of violence are eventually pushed into this realm and face no resolution. There is no retribution for Mildred drilling a hole into the thumb of a dentist, burning down a police station, or beating up some kids at her son’s school; and similarly, Officer Dixon faces no charges for throwing a man out of a window. In essence, we are left with the impression that in this town, law and order exists to torture black suspects, arrest children at playgrounds and cover up the incompetency of its officers. Is this meant to be subversive? If so then why not use the script to call this out through characters other than the female utilizing male strategies of violence and destruction to get her case heard?!

Instead, the central murder case becomes an example of tokenism that is inherent in the film’s portrayal of women more generally. Take the case of Denise, our token African American woman who works with Mildred; in an attempt to quieten Mildred, the racist Officer Dixon arrests Denise for possession of two Marijuana cigarettes after an unwarranted offscreen forced search that leaves her spending weeks in jail. On getting out, the first thing this bubbly and beautiful character does is to seek out her white female friend and help her repaint billboards! She has absolutely no depth of her own and only exists as a racialised pawn in the peripheral sphere of white characters. Perhaps a more realistic portrayal would have been her attempting to seek justice on her own account for having a federal criminal record that will most likely inhibit employment and financial prospects in the future.

You could also be forgiven for thinking this film was about Angela’s mother Mildred and her quest for answers and justice for her murdered daughter. However, Mildred goes through absolutely no character arc, finds no resolution and is by the end exactly where she started — attempting to confront male violence against women with more violence. She is a woman brilliantly attempted by Francis McDormand, a far better actor then the script would suggest as it lacks a realistic portrayal of a complex character and often relies on the violent linguistic sphere of maleness. During a fight over the use of the family car, for instance, between Mildred and Angela:

Angela screams “I hope I get raped on the way”

Mildred screams back “I hope you get raped too”

Now, I’m just a woman (so what do I know) but in what world, in what world do women scream that at each other?! If male sexual violence is so prevalent in those small american towns that women deal with it with such flippancy, then surely we should be exploring why that is the case and at least dealing with it with some alarm.

Sadly enough, this is also likely the only conversation that would entitle the film to pass the Bechtel test (a classic test that shows whether a film has even in the most basic way attempted to show women on screen as more than simple tokens). It is the only conversation in the film of note between two named female characters, and though not about a male character, it is instead about male sexual violence against women and girls!

Domestic violence is also clumsily shoved into the script in the form of Mildred’s abusive ex husband who at one point during the film has Mildred by the neck up against a wall. This, we are meant to believe, is resolved by the entry of his comically dimwitted 19 year old girlfriend searching for the bathroom. Within minutes Mildred and her long time abuser are sitting again at the kitchen table, clutching hands and mutually bonding over the death of their daughter. Again, in what world would such an act of violence not alarm the hell out a new female partner! In what world would such an act of violence be dealt with in such a flippant way by the sufferer of this violence who ends up comforting her abuser within minutes of an attempted strangulation! The inconsistency reeks of a clumsy male attempt to write violent trauma of women at the hands of men.

Moving on to the men in the film, there are two main characters of note. Chief Willoughby, played by Woody Harrelson, and the incompetent, racist Officer Dixon. Midway through Willoughby takes his own life during a difficult battle with cancer. The town never finds out the reason for Willoughby’s suicide, and are instead encouraged to believe that it was the defamatory billboards calling for action, paid for by Mildred that lead to this tragic event. We find out later that the Chief in fact pays for another month’s rent on the billboards just before he dies so that Mildred will have to defend them for another month. His final act of supposed dark humour, however, leaves us wondering, if he had truly wanted to help her, why not have done something more constructive? Why not have written one of his letters to the whole town to be read out in church or at school that asked the town to finally take this woman seriously and help find the killer of her daughter? Unfortunately, this would have been too constructive, too helpful, so instead, we get another white male seeking redemption for his ineptitude with humour at the expense of the women who seem to suffer underneath a suffocating and deadly system of white male violence.

Officer Dixon, who early in the film is revealed as having “tortured a black suspect in custody” has the only decent character arc in the whole film. His path to redemption starts with him getting fired after throwing a man out of a window in a fit of pure anger and unjustified retribution for the death of his friend, Chief Willoughby. We are asked to feel compassion for him seconds earlier by seeing him cry in the arms of a co worker. This subsequent act of brutality goes completely unchallenged by his white counterparts inside the police station, but is picked up on by the new chief in town — a black man.

This new black chief is subjected to derogatory behaviour once he announces himself and we are given the impression, spends the rest of the film attempting to clean up the mess left by the former Chief Willoughby, at one point stating to Mildred “we’re not all the bad guys”. His character unfortunately is yet again another example of the tokenism inherent in the film. He faces no arc of his own and we are left guessing at what he has managed to achieve as no progress in any case, or the workings of the police department is ever shown to us during the remainder of the film.

On losing his job, Dixon turns to drink and self pity, before overhearing a man talk about raping a young woman around the same time Angela was killed. Convinced this was Angela’s killer he starts a fight in order to obtain DNA under his finger nails and sends that in for analysis. This act of seeming smarts, as well as his later road trip with Mildred, takes the character away from his brutality and leaves the audience with a sense that he has grown, matured and changed for good.

Surprisingly, Dixon is also given the most insightful comment in the film whilst talking to Mildred. Dixon talks of his own route to policing, which included approaching education as an exercise in “learning English” something he feels he has to do in order “well, to do anything”. This simple line spelt out by a semi literate man who lacks any qualities other than the fact that he is white and male is the sole attempt of this film to be self reflective — THE ONLY THING A WHITE MALE HAS TO DO IN MODERN SMALL TOWN AMERICA IS TO SPEAK ENGLISH and he will be rewarded with far more than any other group in that same town. I am quite sure this wasn’t written as an insight, but merely as more confirmation of the officers’ lack of cognitive abilities. Yet it underlines brilliantly that all a white straight male must do is speak english — and basic english at that — and he will go far in a society that is built by, governed by and policed by white males.

The sentiment echoes how I feel about the writer, Martin McDonagh; it seems like all he had to do was submit a script as a white male with nods to contemporary conversations and that was enough to get this pathetic screenplay funded, directed and filmed.

By the end of this film I felt two things — thankful that it was over and yearning for more. The lack of resolution, though I’m sure touted by many critics as edgy and cool, I found insulting. Another instance of a white male writer using the rape, torture and murder of a woman to sell a lousily written script. Racism was shoved in there awkwardly as a trope, an “honest portrayal” that lacked any agency for the people who would be subjected to it. Dwarfism too in case it hadn’t taken tokenism far enough already. The film ends up articulating with only one voice as all the characters ending up sounding the same and acting like each other as well. The only character development in the entire film is reached by the worst of the lot. Its logical conclusion must leave audiences with a sad sense of white male entitlement and a depressing inevitability of injustice for all others in that society.

I am not advocating for stories that are supposedly about women to be written only by women. However, if those stories are only written by men then it is more likely that the women in those scripts will only feature as part of a soundscape to a larger narrative of white male entitlement, resolution and redemption. Female bodies being used as fodder for this kind of narrative should not be something that is Oscar worthy in the age of #metoo. We should demand more as women, and by god we deserve better!

If this film ends up winning the ‘Best Film’ Oscar, then the Patriarchy has figured out a way to win — and it ain’t by giving into a more egalitarian world where women fear for their lives and their bodies less, but a world in which they tip their caps to us and say “Top of the morning to ya. I see your rape, I see our racism, I see this cruel cruel world that we have created, but ladies, people of colour, gays, midgets, and anyone really who isn’t white, straight and male, that’s just the way it is.”

No line epitomises this apathy better than when Chief Willoughby says: “If you fired every cop with vaguely racist leanings there would be about three left and they’d hate the gays.”

And with that casual shrug, they persisted.

Well fuck that.