Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Directed by Martin McDonagh
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Starring: Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Lucas Hedges, John Hawkes, Samara Weaving, Peter Dinklage, Sandy Martin, Nick Searcy, Abbie Cornish
Year: 2017
Country: USA, UK
Author Review: Roberto Matteucci
"You can not send your mother to talk to the police."
In so many have learned, at their own expense, not to confuse the beautiful glimmering America of the coasts and large cities, with the deep American province.
The differences are many and not only politics.
The inhabitants, even those with liberal ideas, still have strong attitudes and hard personality, ready to defend their ideas even with impetuous ways.
Even the protest against the authorities - for those who feel the victim of some abuse - can assume spectacular connotations, also through actions of marketing.
The director Martin McDonagh lived this situation, and in an interview tells:
“You’ve said that this idea started for you while you were travelling across America, nearly 20 years ago, and you saw an angry message on billboards. Why did that stick with you long enough that we’re getting to see this film, so many years after you saw that?
McDonagh: Because the message was very similar to what Mildred’s message is, at the start of the film, the idea of the anger and the pain behind that was something that I could never really get out of my head.” (1)
It is the rage the fulminating idea - taken from large advertising on a provincial road - of the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The film won the award for Best Screenplay at the 74th Venice Film Festival, and at the Toronto International Film Festival Won People's Choice Award.
Mildred lives with her daughter in Ebbing in Missouri. Ebbing is a city of the vast and determined American province. She manages a farm by herself because her husband left her for a younger girl. A few months before she lived a terrible tragedy, when the teenager daughter Angela was fiercely and cruelly killed: "Raped while dying."
The police of Ebbing, led by Sheriff Willoughby, have not succeeded in finding the repugnant serial killer.
Mildred is convinced that the Sheriff has neglected and abandoned the investigation for both incapacity and laziness.
The idea comes to her suddenly. Driving on a long country road, she notices three large broken billboards, unused for so much time. She runs to the advertising agency and rents the posters for a warning notice to the Sheriff.
The viewers take some time to read the message or rather the three provocative questions, which accuse the Sheriff of having forgotten the investigation. The questions are a precise example of strategic marketing because they blame and at the same time stimulate the pride of the police to resume the hunt for the murderer.
A clash begins between Mildred and the city because everyone is in defence of the Sheriff.
It is a strong and violent contrast; the director manages it, both physically and with accurate and clears dialogues. Mildred does not hesitate to plant the tooth cleaning drill in her dentist's hand, or to kick a boy's testicles and immediately later - showing no sexual discrimination - gives another kick into her friend's vagina. But the woman's gestures are amplified by the dialogues, which are both dark, and sarcastic.
"I love dialogues, it's something that I write naturally! When I write dialogues it is like copying conversations that are happening, as if there were two people talking in my mind. Sometimes it's a good thing because you have to maintain the pace with them, but you also have to know very well your characters and their idiosyncrasies, darkness, hopes and dreams." (2) In fact, the many strong, short and decisive sentences keep the rhythm of the story, mixing the dark background with a baroque tone. Therefore language is not that of a pupil of a Catholic school, but the lively and colourful language of a country woman with a difficult life.
The director is not interested in a crime story, in discovering the guilty, he is not stimulated to restore justice. And perhaps not even Mildred is involved in justice. We see variegated types of human personalities, strong temperament, rude characters, aggressive individualities.
Mildred is neurotic exasperated and bad person, she talks with slippers, swinging on a swing. The author is perfidious with her when he shows her in the flashback of a few hours before the daughter was killed: she is fighting furiously with the girl with very offensive words. It is her cruel guilty conscience, perfect for psychoanalyzing the mother's behaviour.
The director is more merciless when Mildred accepts, forced, James's dinner invitation, a small man in love with the woman. Mildred treats him with presumptuous superiority, despite the kindness of James, makes the man explode in a final and true sentence against Mildred, a woman: "who never smiles, who has no good words for anyone."
Mildred's clone is the police officer Dixon. Ignorant, racist, brutal, manic, stupid, incapable. He is the stereotype of the provincial policeman; he thinks he is omnipotent and to be simultaneous: police officer, judge and executioner.
Even Dixon is a Freudian character, and with him the author Martin McDonagh is sadistic. Next to Dixon, the author builds the figure of an elderly mother but she is still capable of influencing her son. The psychoanalytic message is evident.
Mildred and Dixon hate each other, they face angrily both openly and hit, the people involved, without saving arrogance and damage. Fires, beatings continue in history.
The consequence of this tormenting and inhuman relationship, mixed with a provincial and limited environment, is the creation of justice: merciless revenge against all forms of abuse.
The decisive moment arrives, the two characters mix and merge, they have reached an agreement, a common modus operandi for the victory of genuine justice, that of ordinary and common people against those who have an idea of justice philosophical and conformist.
The director admits that there is no political purpose in the film: "I hoped to do something more universal and timeless, or to propose the story of a mother who is trying to get justice. But it is not a comment to the Trump presidency because we shot it before it was elected." (3) and in fact, the message is global and valid universally.
The script is solid and energetic, the characters are not true, they are definitely assembled with skill. The director cares any scene, any framing, any detail. He combines with a fast editing, an exalting photography of the solar spaces and the dark nocturnal ones; even using the flames of the purifying fires that everyone seems to use in an intimidating society.
Essential are the actors and the music. Both languages are an important role.
The director talks about Carter Burwell, author of the soundtrack, exactly describes both elements:
"Luckily he made me listen to a song and it was the theme of Mildred, with a very spaghetti western atmosphere and he told me:" I know you might think it's a crazy idea, but I'm thinking a bit about Sergio Leone " . Instead it was perfect, also II could never have thought before he shared it with me, not even for a second, and instead it works perfectly! Frances had this idea of being inspired by John Wayne for his character, his walk, and his attitude because he had iconic roles in which a person arrives in the city and hit the institutions. " (4)
The connection between Sergio Leone's music and Frances McDormand's John Wayne acting is so smart.
1) http://collider.com/martin-mcdonagh-interview-three-billboards-outside-ebbing-missouri/
