The American South sure is a provocative setting for many a
cinematic story. You’ve got the classic staples from corrupt and violent
sheriffs, stab-happy lunatics in woods, racist old women sitting on porches,
and rapidly escalating feuds that lead to more destruction than is necessary.
Martin McDonagh’s picture ‘Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri’ invokes
most of those—with the exception of the stabbiness. There’s no chainsaw-wielding
lunatics or Deliverance hillbillies, but there’s morbidity abound nevertheless.
Set in the eponymous town, a classic sort of Bumblefuck,
Whogivesacrap County, the film starts with Frances McDormand’s Mildred putting
up a series of billboards months after the death of her daughter, basically
telling the local sheriff to stop eating donuts and get off his ass. Said
sheriff, played by Woody Harrelson (who you may recognize from Now You See Me),
is a bit perturbed, though not as much as his deputy, Sam Rockwell’s Dixon. In
such a small nowhere locale, small slights can escalate into bitter
name-calling, bullying, and in this case, schmucks eventually getting tossed
out of windows. There’s certainly a good sense of how the close ties of such a
community can go all the wrong way when one person steps out of line.
Performances are great all around—Mildred, justifiably
upset, propels herself by rants both hilarious and gut-wrenching to everyone who’ll
listen, from the aforementioned sheriff to a Catholic priest. Although her
actions are very understandable, as others point out, she’s blunt enough about
it that it ratchets up tensions even in her own family. Harrelson’s character
isn’t in it as much as you’d like, although it does lead to one good punch of a
moment that contrasts to his somewhat bumbling southern sheriff persona in that
black comedy style that characterises the film.
The side-characters are also nice and memorable—there’s
Peter Dinklage as a bar owner, sporting a seventies mustache that only Peter
Dinklage could pull off. Dixon’s mother is the one who seems to domineer her
cluelessly racist son, and as many older women in southern settings do, likes
to chug cheap beer on a slightly mouldy porch. Abbie Cornish turns in a
slightly amusing performance as Willoughby’s wife, at first seeming to attempt
an American southern accent before just sort of giving up and reverting back to
Australian.
As mentioned, it is pretty much a bleak film—nobody gets out
clean in this one, with Mildred coming off as rather belligerent, and the cops
approaching things with the complete disregard to little things like rights as
you may expect. The latter part of the film is somewhat about Dixon trying to
redeem himself, although he doesn’t truly shrug off some of his earlier
attitudes, so how well you sympathize to that will depend on how you take to
those. The ending is inconclusive—although it does ultimately fit the dryly
cynical theme of nothing being really resolved in such a small corner of nowhere.
If you like yourself a rather stark dramedy in that style,
give this film a watch. Give it a miss if you like more levity and upbeat
stories—but for a look into the nasty side of the south, with solid
performances and Dinklage staches, give it a look…
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