Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
An ambiguous film, to say the least, yet wholly deserving of its many awards and nominations.
What is Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri about?
A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder when they fail to catch the culprit. (from IMDB)
My review of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The soundtrack is a wealth of intelligently chosen musical pieces - although at first they may seem like odd choices, they work well. For example, who'd have thought that ABBA's "Chiquitita" would work for a harrowing scene where a building is set on fire and a man gets severely burnt? It's genius. I also love how music isn't always used. Some scenes are better because of it.
The use of colour is amazing. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I love that particular scene where McDormand's character is getting interviewed in front of her billboards, and the red of the boards behind her just immediately ties to the subtle red of her shirt poking out from under her overalls. Or the scene where she's sitting outside talking to Woody Harrelson's character, and the camera isolates her so all you can see is the bright green of the land behind her and the blue of her overalls matching the piercing blue of her eyes. It's scenes like that that make me go "Wow", because I can tell that serious thought has gone into composing that shot. It's cinematic art.
The editing is also incredible. The dialogue is superb. The direction is flawless.
The actors take on their characters with a shocking authenticity. They suck you right into their world and command the screen. And no one does it more than McDormand, who is every inch worthy of her Oscar win.
The characters are all well written. Everyone is three dimensional, everyone is real and human and flawed, and they all have histories, pains, and desires. There's also some excellent character development. I love how we see the good and bad of every character, and how we watch the characters change and learn from their mistakes. They're far from perfect, but they’re antiheroes in whom we can see a bit of ourselves.
Relationships also play a big role in this story. There are plenty of messy, complicated dynamics between people, and these relationships are invaluable when it comes to the characters' well rounded personalities. These relationships shape the characters, and the writers do an incredible job of showing character through the characters around the character. If that makes sense.
But as good as this movie is, it also has its issues.
- The ending. After an amazing movie, I was expecting an amazing ending. I was expecting to find out who had raped and killed the daughter, and I was expecting justice to be served. But maybe I was missing the point...
The film’s writer has this to say about how he ended the film: “It was about not wrapping up the story with a bow, not finding the solution and that person getting his comeuppance and all of that, because the story is more about change than it is about solutions.”
He has a point. The characters in this movie do terrible things and they often aren't punished. While the movie never excuses this, solutions aren’t given, either.
Looking at where Mildred and Dixon are at the end of the movie is quite astonishing; the two sworn enemies are actually talking, they're actually teaming up, and Dixon shows that he has a heart after all. As far as character goes, we're seeing incredible development. And maybe that's what the ending is about. It's about the characters learning about themselves within a terrible situation and it's about them changing.
On one hand, I respect how it ended and I can totally see what the writer was trying to do. On the other hand, it is still a movie, and a movie tells a story. A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and a story should follow through on the promises it's made to an audience. The way this movie leaves it, the story is incomplete. We still don't know who killed the daughter, and we don't know what the two main characters are going to do about it. Is it satisfying? No. But have the characters growth and changed, while the world's still trash around them? Yes.
- No consequences. In the film, Dixon beats a man and tosses him out of a window. He also punches a woman in the face. In both cases, his actions are exposed to a gathered crowd, including the police chief. Another scene in the movie has Mildred setting fire to the police building, which so happens to have Dixon inside of it (he survives, but is badly burned). In this case, the police chief asks Mildred and another man on the scene - not in so many words - if they were involved. They give a weak excuse. And that's that. The chief doesn't push it further.
That's just unrealistic. Dixon beating a man and hitting a woman is assault, and yet he's not even arrested. The worst thing that happens is that he's fired from his job as a cop. That's it. But he beats these two people up in front of witnesses and the incident is totally glossed over! Putting aside the fact that yes, we would've liked to have seen him arrested (again, the movie isn't so much about solutions, so while it never excuses the bad behaviour, it doesn't always punish it), it's unrealistic because there's no reason why the police chief didn't arrest him. We're not even given a reason why he might've been let off. Same with Mildred's setting fire to the building.
