Critical Recommendation: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Some will call this movie anti-cop. Some will call it morally bankrupt. Others will call it crass, depraved, and even filthy. The funny thing is, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri can be all of these things on a whim. And yet, the thing about it that amazes me most is how it reins in all its disparate and offensive parts by the time the credits roll, becoming an unexpectedly moving and even beautiful picture with a lot more on its mind than Mildred Hayes's impressively expansive vocabulary.

Raped while dying? And still no arrests? How come, Chief Willoughby? The roadside billboards tell it all, and Mildred will happily and profanely tell you virtually everything else you could possibly want to know about the case of her daughter's murder, a case that the local police have swept under the rug in favor of either prioritizing other cases or coffee and donuts, depending on who you ask. Mildred is understandably unimpressed by the department's lack of progress on the case, and so she's rented those three titular billboards outside of town to broadcast her inflammatory message to both the cops and whoever else cares enough to listen.

Obviously, the local police don't take too kindly to these shenanigans, and the petty insults lobbed back and forth between them and Mildred slowly evolve into something much more dangerous and eventually tragic. If you're hoping to watch people fight and insult each other for two hours, you've come to the right place, at least partially. Animosity is not all Three Billboards is about, not by a long shot. This movie cares deeply about the lives of these people fighting over roadside advertising, and even though they may seem at first glance to be little more than awful, hateful rednecks looking for a fight, its deconstruction of both them and their emotional barriers is shockingly humanist. This movie baits you with rage, then reveals the people you were angry with to be nothing short of imperfect but sympathetic neighbors with a capacity to love deeper than is comfortable for such inflammatory subject matter.

This is a movie about people who can both hurt others and be hurt by others. It is an intimate character study that rubs your face in a fierce, fiery anger arising from pain, the type of pain you take out on others because it's too much to keep to yourself. In Ebbing, you'll meet a woman carrying the weight of a world taken from her too quickly on her shoulders, a family man sheriff with a wounded ego and a surprising capacity to love, and a corrupt and ill-tempered police officer who turns out to be more human than the media could ever suggest or Mildred could ever fear. The acting in Three Billboards is unbelievably good on all fronts, a statement punctuated by Frances McDormand's well-deserved Oscar win for her portrayal of Mildred.

This is a movie about connection with others. One of the most unexpected elements of Three Billboards is the strange respect shared by Mildred and Bill Willoughby, a ticked-off woman and a sheriff who should and even do hate each other. It's less about the ideologies either of them cling to and more about the fact that ideologies don't matter once disputes become personal and emotional. There are characters in this movie I saw as static and unchanging, characters who eventually shocked me with surprising depth. Three Billboards has a habit of making you hate certain characters and the ways they portray themselves, only to later shame you for your reactionism to what was little more than a facade.

This is a movie about trying to keep others from moving on from your tragedy. Mildred puts up the billboards in part because she needs a reaction from others, a reaction that will make her feel as though her daughter's murder is important to anyone other than her. It's a last-ditch effort for any publicity at all, one that even catches the attention of the local news; I suppose it worked, in that sense. Mildred's reasons for pulling this stunt are far more emotionally complex than shame on the cops, and the more her layers are peeled back, the more her emotional walls come down, the more interesting she and her relationships with those she deems the enemy become. Three Billboards explores grief in ways I've never seen in any other movie.

Most of all, this is a movie about how people are complex. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than with Dixon, an initially racist and impulsively violent cop about whom Three Billboards cares enough to develop. Granted, this movie's empathy does not prevent it from commenting viciously on injustice, and it features one scene where Mildred sarcastically and even unfairly lambasts a probably innocent Catholic Priest for sexual abuse in the church. It's also not afraid to offend some people in its willingness to admit that racists and other people whom society looks down on have lives, loves, and fears just like the rest of us. It readily recognizes that people and their attitudes about life are the sum of their conditioning, and for as profane and angry as this movie can be, its fury rings deliberately hollow, while its love and empathy are what ultimately ring true.

Three Billboards is an intentionally ugly movie, not in terms of its cinematography, which is actually quite beautiful, but rather in the ways its characters interact with each other. Everyone in this movie is beyond horrible to their perceptions of one another, but once the blinders of fury and bias come off, both they and we can look into the eyes of those across the battle lines and realize there's a soul behind them. The gist of this movie is that we as people are far more than the sum of what we agree and disagree on, and it's an unusually measured take on this idea that avoids easy bothsidesism. One could see this movie as a political allegory, but I prefer to think of it as an exercise in empathy. There is more to coexistence than shallow, probably misguided affirmation, and this movie understands that the road to mutual healing is a long one to be walked with the person you once hated, not one to be walked alone with angry and boiling thoughts, and certainly not one to be walked performatively simply so others will think of you as forgiving.

While watching Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, there were moments when I never wanted it to end. And yet, there were others where it became so uncomfortable, so tragic that I almost couldn't bear to watch another second. Rarely does even a drama ever feature characters so complex, so lifelike. Watching these people be this cruel to each other was like watching friends fight, and the relief I felt as they began to heal from their individual wounds enough to stop inflicting them on others was unmistakable. This is a high-wire act that perfectly balances the profane and the serene, the hate and the heart capable of love that it comes from.

This is a movie about us. That will be easier for your pride to admit at some times than others. This movie and the people it's about are going to stick with me for a long, long time, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - 10/10

Ephesians 4:29-32