Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri
(2017)
(SPOILERS) One of the most interesting aspects of what can
often be a rising level of tedious repetition over the extended annual awards season
is the manner in which pictures are reappraised as the spotlight intensifies. A
frontrunner can be reduced to tears as an accusatory critical challenge, usually
political or (in historical or biographical cases) factual, begins to hold
sway. Three Billboards outside Ebbing,
Missouri has been the recipient of the lion’s share of such flak this year,
but I somehow doubt Martin McDonagh intended his picture to be held up to
scrutiny as an exemplar of any comfortably vetted viewpoint; such reductive
treatment would be entirely foreign to its thorny DNA.
The controversy has focussed on Oscar frontrunner Sam
Rockwell’s character Dixon, a racist cop who McDonagh has the temerity to
suggest is also a human being. It might be argued, had his presence been
ameliorated in some way, that Three
Billboards would have an uncontested path to Best Picture; there have been only
plaudits in respect of lead character Mildred (Frances McDormand, also the favourite
in her category), the mother who, incensed at the lack of police progress in investigating
the death of her daughter, pays for three billboards on a town backroad to display
“RAPED WHILE DYING” “AND STILL NO ARRESTS?” and “HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?”
Her focused anger is only matched by Dixon’s boiling rage, striking out in all
directions and coming to a head when his beloved police chief (Woody Harrelson)
shoots himself in the head as a means to bow out early from his terminal
pancreatic cancer. Dixon follows the picture’s most savage, violent act by
attempting to make amends, something some have seen as redemptive. As such, one
might conversely suggest it’s precisely the unpredictable furrow McDonagh ploughs,
his willingness to court the seemingly unpalatable, that has enabled the film to
get this far in the first place.
The biggest compliment I can pay Three Billboards is that there’s a sense throughout of not knowing in
which direction it’s heading, an entirely consuming, blissful rarity in movies.
In the face of that, it’s admittedly easy to come away indifferent to any
negative takes; the picture is by turns sad, hilarious, horrifying and moving.
The cast, as is common in McDonagh brothers movies, are a
joy to behold. On the supporting front, it’s nice to see Caleb Landry Jones, so
commonly consigned to dishevelled, repellant wrecks, playing someone
sympathetic for a change (if not the brightest tool in the shed). Lucas Hedges,
so good in Manchester by the Sea (and
also worth investigating in The Zero
Theorem), is superb as Mildred’s long-suffering son, given to calling his
mum a cunt when arguments intensify, acting a scene with Froot Loops in his
hair and pulling a knife on his father when the latter threatens Mildred.
Zeljko Ivanek is the Desk Sergeant hovering on the indolent spectrum, in a
space somewhere between Willoughby’s well-meaning passivity and Dixon’s
recklessness.
Peter Dinklage is inevitably the town “midget” James (McDonagh’s
dwarf obsession is now rivalling Terry Gilliam’s), but sketches a poignant
portrait of man alternative mocked and patronised. As Abercrombie, Clarke
Peters brings air of withering disdain of fools similar to his most famous
detective role, while John Hawkes has no qualms about foregrounding the ugliest
side of Mildred’s ex Charlie. I had to take a moment to place Kerry Condon
(it’s a while since I saw her in anything). The only bum note is struck by
Abbie Cornish’s wavering accent, not up to the task of both emoting and staying
in an American groove.
Many of the anti- critiques (albeit, most reviewers who have
misgivings over the picture still acknowledge its considerable merits) have
taken issue with what they see as a redemption arc for Dixon, and even more
that he is repositioned as a hero figure. This seems to me to entirely misread
McDonagh’s intent and the tone of the picture generally. There are no heroes
here, only deeply flawed individuals, some of them more so than others; some of
them might be construed as good people doing bad things, and some might be
considered bad people doing good things, but to reduce either to binary
positions is exactly what McDonagh isn’t
doing (I’ve also seen it suggested that the townsfolk are the villains, but
really that’s much too neat for a picture expressly avoiding that thinking;
break down those townsfolk and they are the same flawed individuals as anyone
else). The message, “Anger begets more
anger”, is pointedly delivered by Charlie’s girlfriend Penelope (Samara Weaving),
the dumbest character in the picture (as Dinklage observes “Penelope said ‘begets’?”). By using her as
a conduit, McDonagh’s telling us it isn’t difficult; her truth is much more resounding
and straightforward than the sagacious insights offered by Willoughby in his
three letters to residents of Ebbing, Missouri.
Harrelson is effectively the picture’s third lead, and
positioned as the voice of reason and restraint, a loving father and husband
and, if not wholly diligent – the extent to which he really did everything he
could in the investigation is unclear; he certainly doubts himself enough to be
reviewing the case file again after the billboards go up, and he certainly
indulges his officers’ idleness – he’s a police chief who exercises understanding
and tolerance. In a McDonagh picture, though, it would be a mistake simply to take
him as the “good” guy. He may rationalise his way out of seeing his disease
through to the bitter end with his wife and children, but that doesn’t necessarily
he mean made the right choice. Any more than his puckish payment of another
month’s rent on the billboards, knowing how it will provoke the townsfolk, is
“good”.
Or, in his third letter, suggesting there’s a good man
within Dixon. Whether he has seen something we haven’t, or blindly indulged him
(Abercrombie gives Dixon his marching orders almost as soon as he walks through
the door as the new chief), it’s further indication that, just because Willoughby
stands on a prudent plateau, it doesn’t mean he knows what’s best. I rather
read the letter to Dixon as Willoughby knowing what to say to elicit a very
specific response; Dixon doesn’t do what he does to become a good person, he’s
does it to aspire to the noble image of himself Willoughby has placed in his
mind. Which is why, when that better self doesn’t materialise – when his dreams
of becoming the great detective crumble – he has no perseverance and slips
right back again into inappropriate behaviour (this reminded me a little of
blithe psychopath Junior Frenger in Miami
Blues, who attempts – not very hard – to turn over a new, upstanding leaf while
impersonating a police officer… until he’s run over by an irate offender).
As juicy roles go, this might be the juiciest McDormand has bitten
into, certainly flourishing more fireworks than the quirkily composed pregnant
Columbo Marge Gunderson in Fargo.
She’s fearlessly single minded in her quest, self-destructively indifferent to
whoever it inflames. She sticks a drill through her dentist’s fingernail
(admittedly, the bastard is all set to extract a tooth that may or may not need
extraction without an anaesthetic), knees a couple of school kids who throw
coffee over her car in their crotches, accuses a priest of complicity in
paedophilia, and firebombs the police station. And yet, in one scene she can
show complete indifference to Willoughby announcing he has cancer – for her,
just an excuse not to get the job done he should have done – in another her “Oh, baby”, after he coughs up blood on
her face and embarrassedly apologises, is the height of compassion. She also
talks through her bunny slippers.
Mildred’s crusade bears the weight of knowing the last thing
she said to her daughter was “Yeah, I
hope you get raped too!” during an argument. It’s this twisting and turning
that makes the scene at the end of her date with James where, rather than
clobber her ex with it (there’s never a point we don’t see him as slime, yet
she affords him an understanding we can’t), she places the half-drunk bottle of
wine on his table for him to finish, a masterpiece of tension in miniature. But, if
she restrains herself from hitting him – or his girlfriend – that’s no
indication that her rage has abated. She still needs a channel, and that Dixon
should open this door to her causes me to question the soundness of reasoning
of those who would see McDonagh painting him as a hero, or redeemed.
Mildred: Hey, fuckhead!
Dixon: What?
Desk Sergeant: Don’t say “What?”, Dixon, when she comes in
calling you a fuckhead.
I’d assumed, from the generalised comments I read before
seeing Three Billboards, that Dixon
had a dramatic and defined redemption arc, so I was left scratching my head come
the final scene. He has nothing of the sort. He’s still a racist. He hasn’t
atoned for his sins. He unprofessionally gets Mildred’s hopes up (okay, he’s no
longer professionally employed, but still; and whether she’s okay with it is
irrelevant) because he envisioned himself as the big hero, and when that falls
apart and he’s left with nothing, he needs to do something, so killing someone who deserves it comes to mind, a path
he’s willing to drag Mildred down with him. There’s no redemption there.
Nothing heroic.
Now, McDonagh might have gone another way. He might have had
allowed Dixon’s act to be that chance encounter that solves the crime, “wrapped up through sheer stupidity”, as
Willoughby suggests in his letter, and it would have been very cathartic and very
Hollywood. And very not Martin McDonagh. That would have offered Dixon a heroic, redemptive arc but McDonagh very
specifically doesn’t offer him that. It’s almost as if he’s aware of all the
pitfalls of such clichéd narrative conceits, the sort of devices he references
in Seven Psychopaths… (Similarly,
there are a number of other points where the picture subverts the genre
standard, where a more mainstream picture might have followed an easier path;
the set up itself is the stuff to suggest a cover-up or conspiracy, or gross
incompetence. That Willoughby’s a nice guy rather pulls the rug from under that.
That the crime is never solved is a further pull. Later, when Dixon learns a
letter has been left for him by Willoughby, we rather expect a trap on the part
of Mildred (at least, I know I wasn’t alone in seeing that as a possibility), seeking
revenge, and in another picture, she might have).
Charlie: All this anger, man. It just begets greater
anger.
Likewise, it’s been suggested we’re supposed to see Mildred
and Dixon as the same at the end, as “morally equivalent” individuals who have found a connection on their (as yet
non-committal) vigilante quest. Again, the problem with this is expecting
McDonagh’s writing to fit an established mould. Yes, they have arrived at the
same outlet for their rage, but that doesn’t equate them, and we aren’t
supposed to think that, because Mildred is, to a greater or lesser extent, sympathetic,
Dixon is too. It’s tempting to suggest, if you want easily digestible
platitudes and unswerving, straight-as-an-arrow characterisation, to leave the
theatre with moral certitude, you should just go and watch The Post.
Some opinion pieces have expressed indignation that McDonagh
feels it appropriate to empathise with people who can do or say terrible
things, which I find a baffling position but reflects the kind of blinkered vilification,
the rush to judgement relying on herd instinct, that has gone hand in hand with
the rise of social media: to give no ground from a safe distance, to approach
as all or nothing. There seems to be an almost wilful desire to misread and
rebuke McDonagh, to equate understanding a character with advocating the same.
If anything, Dixon is the devil, extending Mildred an olive branch to join him on
a road trip to hell.
Another connected line to the Dixon debate is that McDonagh
features a racist character without giving a voice (or at best a very
peripheral one) to black characters. Buzzfeed
offered an interesting read, in which this charge was levelled: “the terrible fallacy that we can only focus
on one type of oppression at once…” Okay, but one might equally posit that
it’s as much of a fallacy to suggest that, because you can address more than one subject in a work of art, it’s
appropriate or that it’s your responsibility to do so. You might focus on the
absence of central roles for black characters, and that they should be there in
order to validate McDonagh’s discourse, but that would be to assume Three Billboards is directly about race,
when it is not. You could tell that
story, but it would require repositioning, and with it, Mildred and her cause
would no longer be the driving force. That there is “no further mention of his horrifying past” is rather the point
concerning Dixon; there’s no wrapping of themes and issues in a neat bow.
They’re to be left dangling, unresolved, persisting.
Gabriella: This reporter for one hopes this finally
pits an end to this strange saga of the three billboards outside of Ebbing,
Missouri–
Mildred: This doesn’t put an end to shit, you fucking
retard! This is just the fucking start! Why don’t you put that in your “Good-morning-Missouri-fucking-wake-up”
broadcast, bitch?!
Leading on from this is the “all things to all people” impulse
to evaluate material based on its current socio-political relevance and concordant
achievement. The Vox piece, which does
a very good job of summarising the various controversies relating to the
picture, reached the conclusion that Three
Billboards fell short of “what it
could have meant for this moment”. I’d rather assume that the less neatly
something can be pigeonholed into ticking boxes of “worth”, the more intrinsic
value it is likely to have (this is why you read the critiques of torn critics,
wishing to celebrate Mildred as a strong woman while simultaneously disappointed
the picture doesn’t tackle race as stridently as they’d like). I’d be concerned
by a McDonagh picture that was
leading the charge in “what it could have
meant for this moment”, as that sounds like a very different
writer-director.
I don’t know if Three
Billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri is superior to In Bruges (I suspect not, but time and repeat viewings will tell),
but it’s certainly the best work from either of the brothers since. Neil has
set his sights higher (Calvary) but
only The Guard has achieved the level
of consistency of Martin’s best two pictures. The latter’s Seven Psychopaths is a lot of fun, but it, as McDonagh crucially
identified when he had cause to revisit it, lacks the heart of In Bruges (Neil’s recent War on Everyone is similarly frivolous
to Psychopaths, which is fine, but further
underlines the difference between them turning in great films and simply a high-grade,
Tarantino-esque popcorn ones). I do
know that I don’t think the criticisms of Three
Billboards stand, however, and that I really wouldn’t want it to provide a
safety net of comfort or mollification in any of the ways suggested. There’s
the lurking fear that being Oscar nominated might be the worst thing that could
happen to McDonagh’s voice, because awards naturally encourage and celebrate homogeneity
– what all those peers can agree upon – rather than distinctiveness and
individuality. So, long may he continue to rock boats and ruffle feathers.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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