The burden of Martin McDonagh’s new opus, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, falls on the audience, as is usually the case when the famed Irish filmmaker is involved. His plays and films are rife with trauma and anguish; they’re usually very funny, but even laughs come at the expense of some part of your conscience (at best) or soul (at worst). Everything has its price. He seems to view Humankind with pessimism, often displaying characters who are motivated by violence to enact more violence, everything birthed from trauma in a previous life. These people are often betrayed by the very institutions they had come to trust, like the police or their family or (most troubling) the church. But his stories always seem to float toward a conclusion that seems very, well, Christian. He is not a nihilist for this reason, and Three Billboards strikes me as McDonagh at his most moralistic.

This is the most capital-D drama of his three feature films, following In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, which certainly weren’t capital-C comedies, but certainly wouldn’t have been misplaced in the comedy aisle at Blockbuster. The step from Bruges to Psychopaths was a growth in ambition, but seemingly only in ideas, and while it had a strong ensemble performance, Seven Psychopaths‘ stretched-thin premises were nowhere near as effective as In Bruges’ more pointed, hysterical brutality. Three Billboards is as equally ambitious with its ideas as Seven Psychopaths, but the execution feels a lot stronger. Again, McDonagh flanks his biting dialogue with a strong cast, all playing characters whose motivations are very Freudian in their incarnation, the tragedy is very grandiose and dramatic. And so very, very darkly funny.

Casting Frances McDormand is a no-brainer for any film, but as Mildred Hayes, McDormand’s fit is spectacular. Mildred is a divorced, single mother living with her son, Robbie (Lucas Hedges). Her daughter Angela (Kathryn Newton) was raped and murdered the year before, and after hearing nothing from the police for months, Mildred decides to rent out three billboards down a little-seen stretch of road near her house. The message on the billboards is clear: after this horrible crime, why are there still no arrests? The billboards accuse, by name, Ebbing police Sheriff Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) of malfeasance. Willoughby is a husband and father, a well-respected member of the Ebbing community. Mildred singles him out strategically. She does not go after the more bumbling, irresponsible Ebbing officers, like Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), but instead calls on the head of the station, a name sure to grab more of the attention of the town.

Mildred believes that the billboards and the uproar that they cause will keep the case open, put pressure on the police to solve it, but she is also motivated by colossal anger. Mildred’s toughness is well known throughout Ebbing, and its that ferocity that keeps her from going to pieces and succumbing to grief. McDormand’s performance, so obviously perfect, channels all of the guilt and pain into an almost psychotic concentration on her billboard plan. This concentration pushes her past the obvious barriers: the anger from the town, the alienation of Robbie and the now antagonistic attention from police. Whether she’s blinded of the consequences or accepting them as a sacrifice is never made explicitly known in Three Billboards, and doesn’t have to be. The film isn’t about Mildred learning that she must soften up. Its about the power of grief and violence to overtake the human spirit. Mildred puts up the billboards and there’s no looking back.

There are a lot of strands to McDonagh’s story, including a dwarf named James (Peter Dinklage) who, despite it all, has a crush on Mildred; Willoughby’s young, Australian wife Anne (Abbie Cornish) who tries to handle the whole episode with grace but finds difficulty; and Charlie (John Hawkes), Mildred’s ex-husband and Angela’s dad. Charlie and Mildred’s marriage ended mostly because of Charlie’s penchant for domestic violence, and we see here that his appeals to violence aren’t quite being abated. As the world of Ebbing expands, and we meet (even more) characters throughout the town, McDonagh makes clear that Angela’s murder is just a single act of violence in a universe that is cruel, relentless and (according to Mildred) unjust. Mildred’s attempts to find Angela’s killer doesn’t always seem to be the most logical, but that’s because she has completely replaced her logic with intuition, and that intuition is being run by her bereavement.

This may count as spoiler country so I guess turn around if you’re scared of that sort of thing, but I want to focus on Sam Rockwell’s Jason, who turns out to have a much bigger role in the film than you would initially figure. His character is brash, stupid and racist. The film’s biggest plot hole is that the usually wise and intelligent Willoughby would somehow find something of value in Jason as cop, or even as a human being. Jason is a bumbling mama’s boy, whose mother (Sandy Martin) is a hateful homebody with a pet turtle who seems to be perpetually sitting. McDonagh’s treatment of the character of Jason really stretches the audience’s capacity for empathy. His problems are mostly of his own making, and his anger and hatred can feel evil at times. The film sets us up for an ultimate showdown between him and McDormand’s Mildred, but then McDonagh switches it in an interesting way. He seems to feel incredibly uncomfortable with the kind of comfortable ending an audience might come to expect.

The film’s third act seems a bit too tidy, considering all the building hostilities from the previous hour and a half, and I can’t really fault anyone for having issues with an apparent redemption of Jason’s storyline, but I also feel like it’s kind of missing the point. Three Billboards is not a Kathryn Bigelow/Mark Boal journalism-as-film document, but a moral manifesto against indifference and prejudice. These characters are obvious pawns in McDonagh’s statement against the world (mostly America) and its acceptance of chaos and evil. The film might seem more McDonagh-as-playwright then McDonagh-as-filmmaker, but Three Billboards still addresses a multitude of issues, including domestic violence, racism and America’s violent reactions to non-violent protest. Like Seven Psychopaths, this movie might have too many ideas and its commitments to so many makes it hard to focus on any one in particular, but the performances (specifically the brilliance of McDormand and Rockwell) are so powerful, angry and funny. Its execution matches its ambition, which is a major accomplishment, considering.

 

 

Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh