Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)

[Irish]

I think this stuff is on the movie too, it's not just theorizing on my part.

Any examples, off the top of your head?

[Grouchy]

Any examples, off the top of your head?

He's basically just an asshole until the suicide jolts him out of his stupor. His redeeming act is getting the DNA out of his suspect which fits the definition of "good detective" given to him by Harrelson.

Before this event, he didn't show any empathy at all towards McDormand. His only motivation is his pride on being a cop. The definition of that in his mind is the one thing that seems to change.

[Pop Trash]

I like a film that identifies religion as a tedious, hypocritical nag worthy of nothing but contempt.

Ugh. That scene had all the insight of an atheist having a fit on reddit. And this is coming from someone who has a lot of contempt for organized religion, and thinks the Catholic Church had (has?) lots of problems with sexual abuse cover ups. Compare and contrast with the similar, but much better handled, scene in Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me.

[Spinal]

How so?

Because a woman that has hungered for justice will never have it. Instead, she has embraced pain-fueled vigilantism. She is embarking on a cross-country trip with a man defined by ignorance, prejudice and rage. This is only a 'redemptive' moment for Dixon if you consider murder based on one overheard conversation in a bar to be a legitimate course of action. We see that an inability to receive true justice can lead good people into troubling situations where they compromise principle in order to take what vengeance they can, because inaction is too agonizing.

[Spinal]

Ugh. That scene had all the insight of an atheist having a fit on reddit.

Atheists have a lot to be angry about. People who impose their superstitious morality on the lives of others deserve to be told to fuck off.

[Grouchy]

Also, she's attacking a priest in Missouri. Remember when Doug Stanhope raised a fundraiser for a woman who had had her house destroyed by a tornado because she said to the press she didn't believe in God? Stanhope said "if you think her admission didn't take balls, you've never been to Oklahoma".

[number8]

Dixon's character arc is pretty clearly one about remorse: he hits a professional low point, gets a letter reminding him that he's a good guy deep inside, goes through a baptism by fire, receives kindness from his own victim, and then seeks out to aid ease the pain of his antagonist. Regardless of whether or not their hanging quest is disturbing (and of course it is, because the film is upfront from frame one that injustice makes you do unsavory things and makes you an unsavory character), the "redemption" for him is in asking to get in the car in the end, and hers is that she said sure.

[number8]

Haha wow, Wesley Morris' review of this compares it (unfavorably) to American Vandal. Unexpected.

I thought a lot about this movie watching “American Vandal,” an eight-part, sitcom-length show created by Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda, on Netflix. It parodies the true-crime boomlet epitomized by “The Jinx” on HBO, “Making a Murderer” on Netflix and podcasts like “Serial.” And, like “Three Billboards,” the series revolves around jerks. Someone spray-painted 27 penises on 27 cars in the staff parking lot of a high school in Oceanside, Calif. And two student reporters investigate. The prime suspect — a stoner-skate punk senior named Dylan Maxwell — has been expelled. The two reporters poke holes in the case against him and explore a gamut of alternative culprits.

Like Mr. McDonagh’s movie, “American Vandal” takes a circuitous route to earnestly asked philosophical questions about human nature. The show has a breezy confidence that never tips all the way into mockery. But it’s a lot less impressed with itself. It undermines the piety and ethical lapses in nonfiction mystery shows, while sharing with “Three Billboards” a belief in semaphores and that people aren’t any one thing. Also — and this feels important — it feels like the people who made this show understand their setting and the people who live there. I’ve never been to Oceanside, but I believe this show’s rendition of it.

Even in a setting as generic as an American high school, the show has a sense of place. And it’s a white show whose nonwhite characters don’t feel like objects. I’m not sure what Ebbing is. You can feel that uncertainty in the movie’s cop-out of a finale, in its bewildering loftiness (“Oscar Wilde” as a character’s last words) and in the coveralls Mildred spends most of the movie wearing. Her job is at a rustic gift shop, but the coveralls point to the harder blue-collar work we’ve seen Ms. McDormand do in movies like “North Country.” Here, these clothes signify emotional work, yet they feel like a put-on, too. Three billboards, sure — but outside a coffee shop in Portland, Ore.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/m...-missouri.html

[Grouchy]

Dixon's character arc is pretty clearly one about remorse: he hits a professional low point, gets a letter reminding him that he's a good guy deep inside, goes through a baptism by fire, receives kindness from his own victim, and then seeks out to aid ease the pain of his antagonist. Regardless of whether or not their hanging quest is disturbing (and of course it is, because the film is upfront from frame one that injustice makes you do unsavory things and makes you an unsavory character), the "redemption" for him is in asking to get in the car in the end, and hers is that she said sure.

I'm not arguing otherwise. But for the people who take offense that a character with overwhelming negative traits gets a shot at redemption (why would he need it otherwise?) I just wanted to point out that his motivations are not selfless. It's not like he suddenly turns into a good guy at the end of the movie for no reason.

[number8]

I'm not arguing otherwise. But for the people who take offense that a character with overwhelming negative traits gets a shot at redemption (why would he need it otherwise?) I just wanted to point out that his motivations are not selfless. It's not like he suddenly turns into a good guy at the end of the movie for no reason.

But the criticisms aren't because a guy with negative traits gets a shot at redemption. That's a staple of fiction. That's the cornerstone of how character arcs work. The criticisms about race are about the treatment of police racism as simply one of the characters' colorful "negative traits" (which I think is related to the other criticisms about its portrayal of the Midwest as proof that McDonagh is utterly unfamiliar with American life). It's a conversation about something that's very real and very much a current hot topic and how the deeper roots of American racism is perceived differently by different audiences. Themes that the movie is seemingly unprepared to address and one can argue that a movie like this should not be obligated to address, unless the movie brings it up several times and uses it as Mildred's weapon to antagonize the cops, which it does.

I don't think calling it a redemption arc is a misreading of the ending like it's suggested in this thread. I call it a redemption arc regardless of whether or not Dixon's successfully redeemed into a "good guy" because the movie has him actively attempting to correct his many mistakes in the third act (sharing a moment of kindness with his beating victim, taking Woody's letter to heart and doing detective work, forgiving Mildred for causing his burn injury), but the fact that he is a racist cop who antagonized the prop black characters goes unaddressed because the film doesn't know how to wrap that up, so it just shrugs. As if it's going yeah, racism = injustice and he now wants to bring justice, so mathematically he's not going to be a racist anymore. As if that problem is something that you just... stop doing.

When I think about it I'm reminded of the end of Inglourious Basterds where Landa betrays Hitler and claims that he was in it for the glory anyway, not the ideology. But Aldo tells him that he can't just take his Nazi uniform off and poof, he stops being a Nazi. Some things you do you can't walk away from without it defining you and causing you consequence, as symbolically reminded to Landa with Aldo marking him with a swastika. The question is whether a cop falsely arresting black people and torturing them is one of those things.

[Grouchy]

I don't think calling it a redemption arc is a misreading of the ending like it's suggested in this thread. I call it a redemption arc regardless of whether or not Dixon's successfully redeemed into a "good guy" because the movie has him actively attempting to correct his many mistakes in the third act (sharing a moment of kindness with his beating victim, taking Woody's letter to heart and doing detective work, forgiving Mildred for causing his burn injury), but the fact that he is a racist cop who antagonized the prop black characters goes unaddressed because the film doesn't know how to wrap that up, so it just shrugs.

This could be, but I don't know if the film would get any better by including a scene where it's made clear that the black folks won't forgive him as easily as Mildred or the gay guy. There is such a thing as wrapping everything a little too neatly.

[baby doll]

This could be, but I don't know if the film would get any better by including a scene where it's made clear that the black folks won't forgive him as easily as Mildred or the gay guy. There is such a thing as wrapping everything a little too neatly.

My wife thought Rockwell's character was gay because of how he was getting up in Red's space around the pool table.

As for the larger issue of Rockwell's redemption arc, I think the movie's attitude toward the police in general is pretty incoherent. Harrelson's character is supposed to be a good cop, but he becomes a dumb one when he suggests in his farewell letter that Rockwell arrest people for homophobia. Similarly, Rockwell's character is really dumb when the movie needs him to be (the whole schtick with him losing his badge, for instance) and a clever one when he needs to get a DNA sample. And while Harrelson himself says that the overwhelming majority of cops have "racist leanings," his replacement later tells Mildred, "We're not all the enemy." In short, the film blames structural racism on a few bad apples, and then turns around and suggests that the bad apples aren't so bad after all, as if positive reinforcement were all it took to solve America's policing problems.

[Irish]

Haha wow, Wesley Morris' review of this compares it (unfavorably) to American Vandal. Unexpected.

I lost respect for Morris when he published his review of "The Shallows" in 2016. Not only was he shockingly lazy about it, he also had the balls to be smug about his own laziness.

His comparing a 2 hour feature film to a 9-episode TV sitcom that clocks in at ~5 hours is, frankly, dumb. (And even if we disregard the difference in medium and runtime, we have to at least acknowledge that different work might have different intentions. That a sense of place was important to "American Vandal" in a way that it wasn't in "Three Billboards.")

[Irish]

Harrelson's character is supposed to be a good cop, but he becomes a dumb one when he suggests in his farewell letter that Rockwell arrest people for homophobia.

The line, from Harrelson's reading, was obviously intended as a joke.

Similarly, Rockwell's character is really dumb when the movie needs him to be (the whole schtick with him losing his badge, for instance) and a clever one when he needs to get a DNA sample.

Except both are thematic points? And the "schtick with losing his badge" informs on the character?

He loses the badge early, sometime in the first act, before his past is revealed to the audience. Nobody notices until the third act, after he's fired. A misplaced, absent, or modified badge is typical of "bad cop" characters in Hollywood productions; e.g.: the police officers on "The Shield," which was largely about out of control, corrupt cops, notably wore their badges on the wrong side of their uniforms. That Dixon loses his badge and isn't wearing one when he does and says terrible things isn't about his shifting intelligence but meant to imply something about his character, ie his lack of a moral center.

(Neither you nor Grouchy are American, but you're both espousing, to me, a very American viewpoint, in that you can't make sense of someone who doesn't strongly identify with their job. None of the characters in "Three Billboards" are informed by work; the movie isn't about that, and it's not concerned with making any points around it. The only real insight I have into Rockwell's character is that he doesn't give a shit about his job. He's bad at it, doesn't take his authority seriously, isn't interested in getting better at it, and never expresses regret at losing it. To him, it seems more as just "a job" rather than an identity.)

[Grouchy]

Harrelson's character is supposed to be a good cop

Also, I said this before, I don't think the movie endorses this view. Most of the characters feel that way, but it's really obvious to me that he's portrayed as corrupt and lazy.

[Grouchy]

(Neither you nor Grouchy are American, but you're both espousing, to me, a very American viewpoint, in that you can't make sense of someone who doesn't strongly identify with their job. None of the characters in "Three Billboards" are informed by work; the movie isn't about that, and it's not concerned with making any points around it. The only real insight I have into Rockwell's character is that he doesn't give a shit about his job. He's bad at it, doesn't take his authority seriously, isn't interested in getting better at it, and never expresses regret at losing it. To him, it seems more as just "a job" rather than an identity.)

And where do you think his change of heart comes from? Honest question.

And another honest question, it's true that I'm not American (well, technically, I am, but I'm not North American) and many posters on this thread and movie reviewers in general blame McDonagh for taking red staters to task from an entirely foreign viewpoint. Where did he fail in portraying this sort of US lifestyle? Is it something about people's reactions or just the general tone of the dialogue?

[number8]

Heh. I was just about to reply to Irish's post saying that I've seen too many Central and South Americans get annoyed when someone from the US refer to them as non-Americans for me to make that error.

[Peng]

I'm not American (although I lived there for a year, albeit in the north) but the extensive use of c-word will sometimes remind me right in the middle of watching it that "Oh right, it's the guy who wrote In Bruges", which made me wonder how his first American feature, Seven Psychopaths, which I haven't seen, fares about this, or it's tied to Hollywood industry in general more than a specifically American place? Also, there's something artificial about how the film portrays this American town that I can't quite shake but also can't articulate clearly, except comparing to Lars von Trier in that at least when the latter makes a feature talking about American issues from a foreign viewpoint, he at least embraces the artificiality heads-on.

[number8]

the extensive use of c-word will sometimes remind me right in the middle of watching it that "Oh right, it's the guy who wrote In Bruges",

This has long been the fastest way I can tell a writer is from the UK!

The comic writer Garth Ennis is generally very good at simulating dialogue, but he would often have black folks and Italian-American gangsters call other men cunts, and it's one of those tics that never fails to remind me that he's an Irishman.

[Grouchy]

Hahah that's true. It's too good an insult (specially for men) to pass up.

[number8]

It is a fascinating tic to notice because especially in Ennis' case, he lives in NYC and has been an American citizen for a while now. You'd think he'd interacted with enough Americans to know that the men here almost exclusively only use that word against women, if they use it at all. It's like UK writers just want to impose that habit on American media.

[ledfloyd]

It is a fascinating tic to notice because especially in Ennis' case, he lives in NYC and has been an American citizen for a while now. You'd think he'd interacted with enough Americans to know that the men here almost exclusively only use that word against women, if they use it at all. It's like UK writers just want to impose that habit on American media.

A sheriff's deputy referred to detective for a local police department using that word recently, and it caught me off guard.

[Irish]

And where do you think his change of heart comes from? Honest question.

From the letter that Willoughby writes to him. (The Chief's letters change everything for everybody, except it takes longer in Mildred's case.)

And another honest question, it's true that I'm not American (well, technically, I am, but I'm not North American) and many posters on this thread and movie reviewers in general blame McDonagh for taking red staters to task from an entirely foreign viewpoint. Where did he fail in portraying this sort of US lifestyle? Is it something about people's reactions or just the general tone of the dialogue?

I don't know where the criticism comes from, because the film is theatrical---in a "live theater" sense---but people took it literally, all the way down to the title, and accepted each and every line, and every actor's gesture, at face value, as if there was nothing more underneath. (I'm largely talking about reactions outside MC.)

That McDonagh could have changed the location without changing the story indicates to me that the film isn't about a specific place, or an attempt at representing one, and it isn't interested in saying anything substantive about it. If he had called his film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Maine" or "Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Montana," what would need to be changed about the story or the characters? Nothing. What would change about what the movie attempts to say? Again, nothing.

This is a clip from a larger piece I wrote elsewhere, about the location (it's long):

[

Show Spoiler

There's a song over the opening frames called "Last Rose of Summer." The lyrics are derived from an Irish poem published in the 19th century, and the music is based on a traditional Irish folk song. It's been interpreted and re-interpreted by everyone from Beethoven to Bing Crosby and back again. It's a song about the nature of love, the passage of time, and the inevitability of death. (It can be heard again late in the film, during the scene when Mildred fire bombs the police station.)

The first time we see Rockwell's Dixon, he's singing "Streets of Laredo," which is a classic folk tune from the American West. It's about a recalcitrant cowboy who finds himself bleeding to death from a gunshot wound on the side of the road, after a bad night in town, and how he urges a passerby to listen to his tale and make sure he gets a good burial. The last lines of the song are "We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly / And bitterly wept as we bore him along / For we loved our comrade, so brave, young and handsome / We all loved our comrade, although he'd done wrong." (emphasis mine)

The first time we see Red, the advertising guy, Mildred walks in on him while he's reading a book by Flannery O'Connor, an Irish-American author. (This is the edition Red has in his hands.) A lot of O'Connor's stories have a serious moral and ethical bent centered on Catholicism, and her characters tended to be outsized, extreme, and larger than life. (Any of this sound familiar yet?)

Chief Willoughby's last words in the film are about Oscar Wilde, who was a well known Irish playwright, poet, and author. Wilde's most famous work is probably the "Importance of Being Earnest" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray." If you've read either of them, you can probably guess why McDonagh made a point of referencing him.

So given just that---intentional choices delivered up front, most in the first 10 minutes---does anyone think McDonagh set out to realistically depict the Midwest or the South?

[...]

]

Heh. I was just about to reply to Irish's post saying that I've seen too many Central and South Americans get annoyed when someone from the US refer to them as non-Americans for me to make that error.

Gosh, if they're upset about that, wait til they find out we stole a huge chunk of land from Mexico and called it "Texas."

(In all seriousness, Grouch, I apologize for the offense.)

[Winston*]

I just keep thinking about how much more effective for me McDonagh's brother's Calvary was for me than this one. Both are speechy theatrical black comic dramas about hot button issues set in small rural communities, but I felt much more sincerity and humanity in the earlier film. Three Billboards felt a bit like a guy moving chess pieces around.

[Grouchy]

Gosh, if they're upset about that, wait til they find out we stole a huge chunk of land from Mexico and called it "Texas."

(In all seriousness, Grouch, I apologize for the offense.)

Heh, none taken. But like 8 says, it's long been a source of irritation for South Americans.

Calvary is very good.