For all the praise heaped on this movie, for all the high ratings across different websites, I was reluctant to watch. The trailer made clear that it was full of anger, at an intensity I was unlikely to find comfortable. Still, I wanted to maximize my chances of seeing the Academy Best Picture ahead of the ceremony.
I'm not sure in what period the story takes place, but from the phones and a reference to 1986, I'd say the '90s or early 2000s. A little-used road with three long-disused billboards suddenly has a message: "Raped while dying/And still no arrests?/How come, Chief Willoughby?" In a town so small, everyone knows the event in question, and it's not hard to guess who paid for the message: bereaved mother Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand). Alas, for all the sympathy she'd gained, almost no one can get behind the challenge to a respected chief (Woody Harrelson), especially since he has terminal cancer. But Mildred insists on keeping it up until there's appreciable progress on the case.
I, too, can sympathize only so much with Mildred. She's rarely patient or polite with anyone; she would have the police, who seem to have done all they can legally do, suspend basic civil rights all over in her quest for justice; and she commits some offenses worse than anything we know Bill Willoughby to have done. We know from her one flashback that she was a jerk even before her daughter's murder. Sometimes I could just punch her between the eyes.
To be fair, I long wondered whether anyone in the film wasn't a jerk. The Hayes family, including Mildred's ex-husband, their teen son, and their dead teen daughter, is dysfunctional from all sides. The mumbling billboard leaser (Caleb Landry Jones) talks smack to a cop's face, but hey, Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) does have a reputation for racial beatings and other corrupt behavior. The newscaster who reports on the billboards is rather nakedly partisan against Mildred. There's plenty of swearing around, but Willoughby stands out for unprovoked swearing while talking to his little girls. Only a few moderately important characters come across as decent people, including James (Peter Dinklage), who wants a romance with Mildred but senses her bias against dwarfs. (Dinklage is good, but he really shouldn't have had fifth billing on the poster.)
I am capable of enjoying a movie full of jerks. Heck, most of my favorite westerns fit that description. But sometimes I worry that filmmakers mistake their antiheroes for full-fledged heroes. It took until the third act for me to decide that that probably wasn't the case here. There's an explicit message to let go of anger. That same act offered a little redemption -- not in the way I expected.
I respect TBOEM more than I like it. I'm willing to see it gather a few awards. It's just not my first choice for Best Picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment