Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Ladies and gentleman, Oscar season is among us. The time of year when superhero movies hang up their cape and don their slacks; where profit-bellied sequels vacation around the Med; where art house pictures shrug their shoulders and embrace ennui. For me, it’s the best of times.

I was never a film buff during my adolescence. I’d mainly go and watch comedies that involved a group of men attempting to lose their virginity, where hilarious consequences would then ensue. I don’t think I went to watch a drama in the cinema until I went to university. Whenever The Oscars came round I was always surprised as to why Stifler never featured in the Best Actor category and confused by Road Trip’s omission from Best Picture. The Oscar’s was a lot of actors I’d heard of in a lot of films I hadn’t.

I used to watch this kind of thing.

At university I was surrounded by people that actually went to the cinema to watch films - as opposed to hang out on a Friday night. I was now watching films that didn’t have hilarious consequences, instead cataclysmic ones of death, heartache and violence. Initially, I would turn to my mates and ask: “Why are these characters all aged over 21? Where is the guy who wants to lose his virginity?” In time though I came to realise that movies weren’t just about guys putting their penises in baked goods, they could be about falling in love or escaping from aliens – you know, everyday human problems.

Today, I go the cinema much more informed than my teenage self. I won’t settle for anything anymore. I want my brain watered, my heart fed – anything less is simply not good enough. But how do you know what course to plot? There’s so many film releases. Since listening to the Kermode and May Film Review Show, I rarely see a bad film. The man knows his stuff. If The Good Doctor prescribes something, then I don’t take a second opinion. I’m not like Michael Gove: I trust experts and am happy to do what they tell me. Yes, it may make me a cultural sheep, incapable of treading my own path; but it also means I get to watch films that defibrillate my heart, jump-start my soul, crane-lift my mind.

The best podcast going.

This week The Girl and I went to watch a Kermode and Mayo film of the week, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Ever since I read early reviews in October, I’d been excited about watching it. For one, it’s by the writer Martin McDonagh. McDonagh penned and directed my all-time favourite film In Bruges: a black comedy about two hitmen holed up in the titular, following a mistake at work. He also wrote Hangmen, a play that my brother and I went to see last year; again a black comedy, this time focusing on the rivalry between Harry Allen and Albert Pierrepoint, the last of the ‘great’ executioners. Hitmen and hangmen don’t sound like the stuff comedy is made of, but McDonagh imbues his dark material with high-risk levity. From near-the-knuckle humour to devastating pathos, all of his work turns on a dime. He is the showman auteur, a directorial Evel Knivel, taking you from look-through-hands anxiety to relief-of-heart laughter. Only his second film Seven Psychopaths missed the jump.

Three Billboards… and Lady Bird are the frontrunners for this year’s Oscars. Already, Billboards has cleared up at The Golden Globes, taking home four gongs in screenwriting, picture and acting categories. The fact it has achieved this by in no way resembling Oscar-bait is somewhat remarkable.

Lady Bird (left) and Three Billboards (right).

The film centres on Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a woman who has lost a daughter to a heinous crime. On driving down a mountain road, she notes three billboards out of commission; this gets her a-thinking. Soon these structures read: "HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?" "AND STILL NO ARRESTS?" and “RAPED WHILE DYING.” Hayes is a woman on a mission. She has waited months for answers from the police- none have been forthcoming. These billboard then are a middle fingered cry for help. Understandably, the police are pissed. Willoughby has worked tirelessly on the case, trying desperately to find a DNA match, all to no avail.

“You could pull blood from every man and boy in this town over eight,” Mildred suggests. 

Willoughby: “There’s civil rights laws that prevent that.”

How about country? How about a database of everyone’s blood from birth? Willoughby knows there’s definitely civil rights laws against that.

Mildred and Willoughby.

Mildred isn’t interested in laws anymore. The law didn’t protect her daughter. The law didn’t find her killer. The law is an ass. She determined to take it into her own hands. The outlaw against the authorities is a Western trope, and it’s evident here. It being the 21^st Century, however, the West is not what it used to be: guns are no longer kept in holsters, but at home; barroom brawls have been moved out of the saloon into the kitchen; the horse has become a Prius. Theirs is a closed-door kind of violence. Mildred, however, is determined to remind people it's here in the open.

She is the cowboy without the gun. The Man With No Name without the poncho. Literally and figuratively, she’s going to kick down those police doors until the killer is found, fried. Throughout the whole film McDormand wears a blue jumpsuit: McDonagh described this in an interview as ‘her uniform’ as ‘she’s going to war.’ It’s easy to see why McDormand is the out and out favourite for Best Actress, given how Mildred possesses her so completely. Oscars are typically given to actors for transformative roles where they affect disability or play fancy dress with historical figures, what’s special about McDormand’s portrayal is that it’s nuanced without show. She modifies her walk a little to resemble John Wayne; her eyes, in a blink, move from a thousand yard stare to close quarter intimacy; a shoulder shift shows recovery from breakdown. It’s a performance of devastating accuracy: a woman whose humanity has been carjacked by grief, installing itself in the driver’s seat, taking her to places that ain't pretty.

Frances McDormand is a tour-de-force.

If Mildred is the ‘hero’ of the piece, then her antagonists are Chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) and Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell). Even though Willoughby hasn’t caught the killer, he’s not a feckless cop. The fact he has pancreatic cancer too means we’re in a Western where we sympathise with the authorities – not a typical occurrence. Harrelson has never been better than this role, ensuring he characterises dignity against Mildred’s messy grief. The letters he later reads will stay with you as exercises in haunting beauty. Rockwell’s Nixon is a different entity altogether. He is a thick-as-shit racist cop that doesn't know arse from elbow. Living with his momma, he doesn’t think for himself – or anyone else for that matter. Criticism has been levelled at McDonagh for where he takes Dixon, but I would argue it’s testament to Rockwell’s acting that we believe in the character’s shift. This isn’t an old Western – goodies vs baddies – this is modern: blurred lines, grey areas and ambiguity: where a good woman can kick a teenage girl in the fanny, and a bad man can risk all for justice. If you have a problem with a racist man doing good things, then in my eyes you’re a strange kind of liberal. Redemption should be for everyone, even the worst society has to offer.

Rockwell (right) is tipped for Best Supporting Actor.

And what about McDonagh’s trademark black comedy? Boy, is it here. After coming out of the cinema, I wrote notes on my phone for this blog. Here’s what I wrote: ‘We won’t have cunts thrown around in this house.” Joke about dentists. Persons of colour torturing business. Priests. Midgets. Cancer joke.  The style of the jokes range from surreal to satirical; despite seeming non-PC, they’re always from a good place: a case of bad words doing noble things.

If Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri needs any advertising of its own, then I would add: “GO SEE THIS FILM NOW.”  “IT WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH ONE MINUTE.” “AND CRY THE NEXT.” What more could you ask for?

Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri is out now.