Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

We saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, last week and I’m still trying to figure out what to say about it. It was good, it wasn’t so good. It was good because of the three main characters and those who portrayed them. Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson seem to be always good; Sam Rockwell is new to me so I can’t say he’s always good, but in this, he’s very good. Back to my dilemma, in the 60’s and 70’s we had black humor—films, novels, and plays that were tragically funny, putting a finger on man’s need to laugh instead of cry at life’s ironies. Now it’s called dark comedy so that no one might mistake the “black” as a reference to the shtick of Tyler Perry and his madcap Madea. Three Billboards was in the same vein as Fargo or any of the other Coen brothers’ films, funny and not so funny. McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a tough, recently divorced mother of Angela (Kathryn Newton) who was abducted on her way home, set on fire, and then raped as she was dying. After too many months of no progress solving this heinous crime, she decides she needs to goad Chief William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) into action. She rents three billboards on a quiet stretch of highway near her home: “Raped While Dying,” “And Still No Arrests,” and “How come, Chief Willoughby?” Ebbing reacts. The citizens are divided because some think she’s wrong to attack their police chief this way and some agree with her about his inaction. Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), second in command to Willoughby, goes out of his way to get her to take the billboards down, even beating nearly to death Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), who had rented the -billboards to Mildred, and then throwing him out the second-floor window of his office. Officer Dixon is a Missouri bigot who doesn’t mind letting everyone know it, especially any blacks he may encounter. He thinks his badge lets him do and say anything he wants. The plot shifts back and forth between those who want action and those who don’t. In fact, this shifting is what I found not so good. It seemed like there were too many places where the story could end, but it didn’t. And when it finally did, it was unresolved and I was left unsatisfied. As I first said, half tragic, half humorous, with the humor winning out. One example of the humor will suffice: Mildred has agreed to a dinner date with James (Peter Dinklage), the town midget (but really a dwarf), because he has supplied her with an alibi when the police station was fire-bombed. He excuses himself from the table, saying to Mildred, “S’cuse me, Mildred, I’ve gotta go to the little boys’ room.” Not a great laugh, maybe, but you had to be there to appreciate it. It was a good film but not quite as good as I wanted it to be. I’m sure that all three—McDormand, Harrelson, and Rockwell—will be considered for Oscars, with Rockwell the most likely winner, but the director, Martin McDonagh, and the film will not.