Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

(Warning: contains spoilers for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.  Also has racially offensive terms)

Yaaaay!  Oscars time, where I move into the cinema and watch as many of these films as possible.  Even though, admittedly, they're often excessively long, over-hyped, and about Serious Issues.  Feeling happy seems to be actively discouraged.

So imagine my surprise to discover that one of the main contenders for this years awards is less than 2 hours long, and funny (albeit in a really dark way...)

Three Billboards.  Count 'em

It's not a cheery subject matter, admittedly.  Frances McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a woman whose teenage daughter has been raped, set on fire and murdered.  Seven months on, the police have pretty much stopped investigating.  Incensed by this, she hires the eponymous three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri and has the following messages posted. RAPED WHILE DYING.  AND STILL NO ARRESTS.  HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?  Unsurprisingly, Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) isn't delighted by this, and neither are a lot of the Ebbing townsfolk who have sympathies for Mildred's loss, but are close friends with Willoughby and are keen to make their displeasure at Mildred known.  Paths to redemption ensue.

There's a lot of factors that make this film great, and most of them are found in the acting.  Frances McDormand seems likely to add another Oscar to her wins this year for her portrayal of Mildred Hayes.  Instantly iconic in her blue boilersuit (notably similar to the one she wore in 1984's Blood Simple.), she is quickly a character to root for.  Seven months after a major trauma is an interesting place to start the drama.  We see flashes of Haye's life with her children, and the family arguments that ensue.  We see life after Angela's murder, and what is left once all the immediate furore has died down.  We do not see Angela's murder, nor Mildred's discovery of it.  The closest we get to that is the charred body-shaped patch of grass under the billboards that Mildred returns to in order to plant flowerbeds by.  Some of her best scenes, however, come with Chief Willoughby, who tries every trick he has to get her to take the billboards down.  There is a respect between the two, and it feels a lot like the two are verbally sparring (and enjoying it), but know the boundaries not to cross (compared to Sam Rockwell's Jason Dixon who lashes out with the deliberate intention of hurting people).  When Willoughby plays his trump card ("I have cancer"), Hayes counters unsentimentally with "yeah, I know.  Everybody knows." and needles him into getting on with solving Angela's murder before he dies too.  Mildred is entirely unsentimental, as seen in the meeting with the deer ("You're pretty, but you ain't her"), her meeting with the local pastor ("You're all culpable"), her meeting with the man who claimed to have murdered Angela ("Did you?  Were you?").  She refuses to play nice, because playing nice has got her nowhere, long before Angela's death.  Her abusive ex-husband now has a significantly younger girlfriend, her son hates her, she won't countenance the man who loves her (Peter Dinklage).  That is not to say she doesn't care.  When Willoughby unexpectedly sneezes blood on her during one of their verbal spats, he is quick to apologise and she is quick to forgive ("I didn't mean to...", "I know, baby, I know").

Everyone online should learn to argue like these two.

Willoughby and Dixon have earned both Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell Best Supporting Actor nods, and it is difficult to choose between them.  Willoughby is the more temperate of the two, and Harrelson definitely holds his own in his scenes with McDormand.  His influence is clearly felt even when Harrelson is not on screen, and his actions guide and define both Mildred and Jason.  But it's Dixon who changes the most during the film, and it's Dixon who has the longer "journey".  In some ways, he's very much still the child - living subserviently with his horrible mother, reading comic books at work instead of doing any work, and essentially throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his own way.  But he begins to move past that as the film progresses until you actually find yourself rooting for him.  The problem with his story arc is this: Jason Dixon is a violent racist who has made a reputation for himself by actually torturing black people.  He arrests and detains a black woman for days because she is friends with Mildred.  He is vile to every non-white person he sees.  The film does little to address that.  He does, however, go through a lot of pain. In film land, that can equal some form of redemption.  The problem in this instance, is that we find ourselves rooting for this reformed character who has at no stage even vaguely acknowledged that his racist outlook was wrong, or even vaguely problematic.  Admittedly, this is a film in which redemption is started but not completed - but I would argue that the racism of Jason Dixon has to be, at the very least, acknowledged.

He's got problems with white folks too...

Outside of the main three, the supporting cast also feel very well fleshed out.  Peter Dinklage lends real pathos to James - a character who could have easily been a throwaway 2-dimensional plot contrivance.  Lucas Hedges is compelling and complicated as Robbie - Mildred's son who is grieving the death of his sister, angry with his mother about billboards, protective of her when it comes to his father (the speed and fluidity of movement when he pulls a knife on his abusive dad is all it takes to show that this is a well-practised move).  Kathryn Newton has one scene as Angela, but immediately sells the dynamic of teenage daughter, saying throwaway vile things to her mother because families always known the short cuts to hurt each other.  Momma Dixon, Charlie, Red, Abercrombie, Denise, Penelope - all characters that feel like they got significant screen time because I feel that I know them, but actually maybe got three or four lines each.

I can't understand why Martin McDonagh (writer and director) hasn't been shortlisted for the Best Director Oscar, but has been nominated for Best Original Screenplay.  Ebbing feels like such a well-realised powderkeg of a town, and it feels like everything is at stake all the way through.  There's Tarantino-esque levels of tension, and a couple of solid gut-punches in terms of plot twists and emotional beats.  It's a real shame that the racial tensions aren't better explored (for a film that explores racism in modern America, Get Out is your go-to).  But there's so much crammed in to a sub-2-hour film (without it feeling hurried) - that is down to skilled writing and skilled direction. 

I have no desire to return to Ebbing, Missouri, but I wouldn't mind spending a lot more time with those characters.  But from a distance.  They're scary.

Additional comments, thoughts and concerns:

• PC progress in Ebbing - Mildred: "how's the nigger-torturing business?" Jason: "You can't say that - it's people-of-colour-torturing" 

• Warning: There are about three things that will have you watching from between your fingers: the dentist, the diner, the bathroom.

• I look forward to a Mildred Hayes action figure.

  

  It'll look a bit like this...