Film Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

This review may contain some minor spoilers which expose certain aspects of the narrative.

RAPED WHILE DYING
AND STILL NO ARRESTS
HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?

A mother’s daughter goes out on the town one night and is beaten up, raped, and burnt alive.

The film opens in the immediate aftermath of this atrocity, set against the gorgeous green mountains of rural Missouri.
A folk song, The Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore, is sung by soprano Renee Fleming (fans of ‘In Bruges’ will be prompted to recall the arresting scene on the Bell Tower where Brendan Gleeson takes the plunge).
This opening sequence oozes with poignancy, and throughout the film, certain viewers will surely notice the textural as well as intertextual overtones with ‘In Bruges’ (e.g. dwarf).

The initial narrative exposition is fast-paced but not rushed, lending the momentum of the film a direct and determined edge akin to the nature of our protagonist. The cinematography and overall vision of director Martin McDonagh are just as firm and fascinating as In Bruges, if not better. The myopia of the smalltown mentality is juxtaposed against the enduring power of Nature’s grandeur with poetic subtlety.

As we continue to exist and explore our world here in the 21st century, it is important that our focus has been directed toward the social context of rural America. While certain aspects may indeed have ‘’changed’’ for the better, the grotesque carbuncles of violence, corruption, and injustice have managed to abide through the manifestations of Church and Government. Mildred Hayes not only confronts the cops but also the Church on this matter, as her tongue twists a knife into the flagrant hypocrisy of her local priest’s mediation by calling him out on his culpability: ‘You joined the gang.’ And these gangs, clubs, and so forth, do come in many forms of public service in whose authority we so blindly and unquestioningly submit to.

Understandably, Mildred Hayes wants to get to the bottom of the ‘whodunnit’ situation with her dead daughter. The local police are either corrupt or out-of-their-depth or both. Mildred assumes both. So she goes on the warpath with a plan of action: to hire out three billboards on which to ‘advertise’ her ‘obscure’ message. Ironically, the message is the antithesis of an obscure advertisement. It is a flagrant protestation. The police department is duly provoked, and thus begins the debacle.

Chief Willoughby is a tormented, terminally ill character played soulfully by Harrelson. At first, he is demonised for his supposed negligence of duty, but it then transpires that the murder case is more multi-layered and impenetrable than meets the eye. His challenged and belligerent protégé, played with miraculous mastery by Worthington, only adds fuel to the fire. Once Willoughby leaves us in the lurch after an idyllic interlude punctuated by a side-splitting Oscar Wilde quote, the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place – and the respective motives and natures of the characters start to shift into a higher, more defined register. Through the intricate tapestry of posthumous letters, woven with real craftsmanship by MM’s screenplay, a ghost breathes a flame of great hope and profound wisdom into the lives of his recipients which stokes the most glorious character arcs.

As Mildred states in the first Act of the film, ‘you are culpable.’ And her action, later on,​n do not exonerate her from this righteous pronouncement. Yet this does not make her a hypocrite, but rather an active participant in the fictive microcosm where ‘anger begets anger’.

While Mildred may be the modern emblem of the social justice warrior, she does not come without human error and moral absolution. She is a mother in the heat of grief and vortex of vengeance. As we cheer her on throughout the film, certain key junctures give us pause and cause us to question her reasoning and instead feel a twinge of compassion for the ostensible villains.

In fact, almost every character gets a go at acting out villainously; it’s just a symptom of trying to disentangle oneself from the spider’s web. Though the approach of ‘Three Billboards’ is fable-esque, it covers human nature with blunt realism. There is no good or bad; there is light in the darkness and darkness in the light.

Incidentally, there is no doubt that the most Machiavellian of villains in the film come in the respective forms of explicit Media Coverage and an implicit Government Cover-up.

For once Chief Willoughby leaves us at the interval, the Media twists and skews Mildred’s story of a grieving mother seeking justice AGAINST her, and a mysterious authority comes out of nowhere to replace the position of Police Chief. This new fellow seems benign at first, like Morgan Freeman’s brother coming to save the day. However, once a secret power of the simpleton protégé is unleashed, which may unmask the rapist-murderer, we witness a phantom fist from above quashing the case for no good reason apart from the second-hand words of an unseen ‘Commanding Officer’. Multi-layered and impenetrable indeed. This sudden suppression of the murder case is perhaps the most disquieting moment of the film, as its implications, although subtextual, are quite sinister.

RAPED WHILE DYING
AND STILL NO ARRESTS
HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?

Perhaps these phrases come as quite a shock out of context.
However, this grieving mother’s triptych is symbolic of the current corrupt condition of the world itself and gives voice to millions of other suffocating witnesses of injustice who are too intimidated by the prospect of whistleblowing and its inevitable not-so-favourable repercussions.

The billboards are like neutral Tabulae Rasae onto which we may inscribe our experiences of corruption and injustice and expose the evils of this world once and for all.

Amidst the stellar performances, ingenious setpieces, firecracking filmscript, and first-class direction, this film is ultimately a fiery indictment against the Powers That Be, particularly in the USA. It deservedly won the appropriate Awards at the BAFTAs, but I do wonder if it will fare as well in the States. After all, nobody likes being forced to take a long, hard look in the mirror.