Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)

[Spinal]

A week later, I've replaced my ambivalence with outright dislike.

That's the spirit!

[transmogrifier]

This is now my most anticipated movie - I am interested in movies that provoke reaction (it's no guarantee that I will like them, but at least they are trying something - things like mother! and Detroit). Universally acclaimed films like Lady Bird and pleasantly solid films like The Post are more of a chore in comparison.

[Irish]

I am interested in movies that provoke reaction (it's no guarantee that I will like them, but at least they are trying something - things like mother! and Detroit).

You didn't talk about this in the "Detroit" thread but I'm interested in your thoughts here, ie how you feel "Detroit" provokes a reaction, and how it might be "trying something" (or at least, something more than your usual studio flick).

[transmogrifier]

You didn't talk about this in the "Detroit" thread but I'm interested in your thoughts here, ie how you feel "Detroit" provokes a reaction, and how it might be "trying something" (or at least, something more than your usual studio flick).

I don't know if it expressly went out to provoke a reaction, but the way it is structured certainly did after the fact, at least among the people I follow on Letterboxd - the way it starts off broad canvas and then suddenly narrows down to a single set piece, and then the slow unresolved fade to the end.

[TGM]

I heard someone on NPR say, "If you like this movie, we can't be friends."

I can't even begin to comprehend this reaction. o.O

[Irish]

Mildred is a difficult character — she’s violent, sometimes in baffling ways. She’s foulmouthed and enraged, pitiless and a bit demented. She stomps around town in a car mechanic’s jumpsuit with the back of her head shaved, ready to scorch the earth. McDormand is imposing in the role mostly because of her stillness. Her back is ramrod straight inside her jumpsuit. She doesn’t walk; she strides. “I really played it like a man,” she said. “I completely based the character upon John Wayne and John Ford movies, because that’s a two-hour arc. Those characters can come out of nowhere, they don’t need a lot of background, you don’t have to explain why they’re like that, they just are the way they are.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/m...eer-surge.html

^ I went to see this because of what McDormand said in that profile (and because of the schism on Match Cut).

Anyway, this movie is definitely tops of the year. Held my attention all the way through and even got me to the edge of my seat a few times. This is the first time in a long time that I walked out of the theater and didn't feel cheated.

ETA: Walter Chaw is a dipshit. Good writer, bad thinker. And an immature man on twitter.

ETA2: Clicking different reviews off Rotten Tomatoes, it astounds me how many pro crix misread this movie, and read things into it that weren't there, especially around Rockwell's character.

[number8]

So I was asked earlier in the thread what made me cringe at the way the movie treats its black characters while I was watching it, and I didn't really answer because I wasn't finished mulling over it. I had to think it over if it was really mishandled, and even if so, should it even affect the rest of the movie in terms of how it's put together? And what pushed me over to disliking the movie after thinking about it for some time is that, yeah, the arcs of all three main characters do in fact hinge too greatly upon how they deal with race to not fall apart in scrutiny (Rockwell has to overcome an earned rep as anti-black, McDormand's quest for justice is partly defined by her alignment to the language of black activism, Harrelson's thoughtful sympathy butts against his compulsion to see Rockwell as a worthy mentee), so it does ultimately hurt my entire perception of this story. Which is a shame, 'cause all three leads gave really fun performances in service of those arcs. But in the end, it's only fair for a movie about a racist cop to be scrutinized in how successfully it handles matters of race, no?

Anyway, Code Switch host Gene Denby, who I listen to a lot and is an actual black man so his feelings on the matter is probably much stronger than mine, laid out some of the stuff that put him off of the movie in this thread: https://twitter.com/GeeDee215/status/939874539139420160

(I'm absolutely going to refer to this movie exclusively as Crash But in the Midwest for the rest of this awards season. It's so damn fitting.)

Sidebar: I also heard Gene on a podcast making the prediction that there's no way this movie would have gotten 94% tomatometer if the film critic pool on RT weren't so predominantly white, and that to me is a fascinating what-if about the cultural tastemaking that US critical communities engage in leading up to the Oscars. What percentage of the years-best of past years only made it to become years-best because they appealed to a demographic that didn't think to question any of the subtextual and narrative shortcomings that would've pulled down the reputation of said movies to at least a merely mild enthusiasm? And once people catch up to it, it's interpreted as a backlash? Well... Crash is an easy example.


EDIT: Removed most of the embedded tweets.

[Grouchy]

Eh, Crash was a piece of shit. That's an unfair comparison.

I'm not sure I understand what he's trying to say (doesn't help that I can't figure out in what order is Twitter supposed to be read) except for the part where he seems to think it's unfair that there's more screentime devoted to the guilt of the oppressor than to the plight of the oppressed. That's a solid enough point and I remember feeling something comparable about Zero Dark Thirty. The difference is that that's a film that clearly wanted to make a vast political point. In McDonagh's microcosm of society, I think he has the right to find whoever he finds most interesting as a protagonist. It's not like he sugarcoats Rockwell's character - he's clearly a hick and a racist.

[number8]

If you click on the thread link you can just read top to bottom linearly. I dunno why I bothered selecting those four to highlight, really, when it's one long thought. My bad.

I think the Crash comparison is deserved. You say Crash is a piece of shit, but why? The reputation it got for being that is similar to the criticism being brought to this. With both films, they're attempts to provide insightful context to real world racism that don't go over well, dramatized in a series of rather over-the-top, histrionic scenarios. This is just able to inject more black humor into itself so it doesn't come across as self-important as Crash, but their (at least initial) embrace by the film community as worthy stories of social parable are equally baffling to me.

[Grouchy]

The lack of humor or any self-awareness at all is indeed a large part of what made Crash so cringe-worthy.

I don't really think racism is the main theme of this film, though. It's just one of the many examples of injustice offered by the script.

[TGM]

In Bruges
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Seven Psychopaths

[number8]

Heh, I think this comparison is catching on. https://www.thedailybeast.com/tone-d...eason-loves-it

In 2006, Paul Haggis' awful movie about racism that nevertheless made white people feel good about racism won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. You might recall this film. It was Crash. As this year's awards season hurdles forward, it's become clear that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri might just end up the next Crash.

[Peng]

If you said it's a bracing exploration of grief and notion of self-righteous justice, I would agree. If you said it's a tonal/thematic/moral mess, I would agree too. Feels like a centrist for it, but it's just that there are so many threads in this film, with some challenging-to-brilliant ones standing side-by-side with some mediocre-to-atrocious ones.

The problems are, most of them can't exist in a vacuum. For example, I find the interplay and shifting moral grounds between McDormand and Rockwell so consistently gripping, until I'm intermittenly reminded that the "shifting moral ground" that Rockwell's character has been on is tied closely to racist, homophobic, and misogynistic mindset/violence, in which I can't reconcile that with the film's half-hearted attempt to have him weakly come face-to-face with his own vileness before sliding him back to confront McDormand again in a different context based on that. Likewise, even the strongest through-line in the film, Mildred's grief, is still infected with things like a nonsensically coincidental revelation in a bar, and the lowest point of the whole film in a mother-daughter fight's last lines from a flashback (which isn't so much on-the-nose as it's blaring "OH THEY SAID THAT AND IT HAPPENED" into the audience's thoughts, with somehow less subtlety than the billboards' words). And just plain bad is the notion that a satisfyingly righteous mic-drop from Dinklage's character is supposed to compensate for the constant, outright, almost-always-for-laugh humiliation he faced throughout the film.

But then there will be the next unexpected turn of events that complicate the scenario compellingly around the corner, or a grace note or more, like the interrogation between Harrelson and McDormand, that will take your breath away. And whatever quality the lines or material thrown at the three actors, McDormand, Harrelson, and Rockwell always sink their teeth into them with gutso. Too bad about that unable-to-exist-in-a-vacuum thing I mention earlier, because I find the last scene a perfect, beautiful note for a film with so many tonal differences to go out on, until I consider where the standing of one of the characters has been shifted from. Still packs quite an existential punch, though. 7/10

[Grouchy]

Thing is, I don't really think Rockwell ever comes to grip with his flaws and violence. A major theme of the film is the unexpected consequences of actions - the entire script is about how the town reacts to McDormand's unusual appeal to justice. Similarly, Harrelson's suicide and the notes that come with it spark a change of heart in Rockwell. But I don't think he has stopped being a louse and a racist. It's just that he feels pride on being a cop and he realizes he hasn't acted accordingly to his own moral standards, as twisted as they might be. I mean, he's a racist but rape and murder are still crimes and he's supposed to be solving them.

[Peng]

I have read that defense, but having people he has wronged before (two black and one LGBT characters) be the ones who have to be tolerant, helpful, or accepting towards him even when those abuses are extreme (arguably almost an attempted murder in one case) feel too much like halfway through a semi-redemption arc, without any or much work from his own character. The bar scene might get by on it being a violent circumstance, but that hospital scene is just... no (and coupled them together they are a definite trend of victims bending over backwards just for the benefit of his character).

[amberlita]

This movie exemplifies what middle America hates about Hollywood. They have no fucking clue how to depict real life and real problems that exist there. This movie was for the liberal gaze and it's a liberal fantasy.

But Sam fucking Rockwell. It's hard to upstage Frances McDormand but he managed it. There is so much humanity in his performance he takes a preposterous character turn and makes it feel right.

[Peng]

Yeah, Sam Rockwell in this awards season is going to leave me conflicted. His character and his arc are weak (especially when juxtaposed with McDormand's), but he is just so good in it.

[Morris Schæffer]

It's funny reading some of the comments, finding myself agreeing with them, like Dixon's arc being not entirely persuasive, but this remains one of the best movies of 2017 that I've seen.

One of the funniest lines is towards the end, when Dinklage and McDormand are having dinner and Hawkes is there with the 19-year old and Dinklage says something along the lines of "did your girlfriend really use the word "begets?"

I love it when a movie makes me laugh my ass off and it's not really a pure comedy, it's not something I saw coming, or something that was advertised in the trailers, but something which occurs spontaneously.

Carter Burwell's score is really nice, evocative, emphatic.

[Spinal]

To me, the film doesn't end telling us that Rockwell's character has redeemed himself. My feeling was that the film ends with an interesting question which is, "Does this character deserve an opportunity for redemption?" The alliance struck at the end is very troubling to my mind.

[Irish]

The alliance struck at the end is very troubling to my mind.

How so?

[Pop Trash]

This movie exemplifies what middle America hates about Hollywood. They have no fucking clue how to depict real life and real problems that exist there. This movie was for the liberal gaze and it's a liberal fantasy.

But Sam fucking Rockwell. It's hard to upstage Frances McDormand but he managed it. There is so much humanity in his performance he takes a preposterous character turn and makes it feel right.

This is how I felt. What's weird is that, even though I didn't care for this film much, I think the ending and Rockwell's character arc are being misunderstood by the "why should I feel sympathy for a racist cop?" brigade (who all seem to be from Brooklyn, apparently). I don't think anyone in this movie is necessarily 'sympathetic' nor do I really think that matters. What does matter to me is that so much of this feels tone-deaf and phony to how people in middle America behave. Yes, I realize some cops are racist assholes and some cops beat-up and/or kill people with impunity, but so much of this felt like screw turning by an over caffeinated screenplay.

[Morris Schæffer]

How so?

I'll venture a guess. [

Show Spoiler

Perhaps because these people are all evil, even the McDormand character. She seems to be using this tragedy of what happened to her daughter as an excuse to, supposedly, go kill some potential rapist as a way of making right what happened to her kid. Which doesn't make her any better than the real perp who did kill her daughter.

]

[Grouchy]

How so?

Isn't it kind of self-explanatory? Rockwell goes into this for all the wrong reasons, for himself and not for the people he will be helping.

McDormand's reasons for doing it might be comparatively more genuine but the scipt often hints that they are not.

[Irish]

Rockwell goes into this for all the wrong reasons, for himself and not for the people he will be helping.

You lost me. What is "this" and who are the people Rockwell isn't helping?

I'm talking about (and I thought Spinal was too) [

Show Spoiler

the final scene in the car, at the start of the road trip, when McDormand and Rockwell plan to kill someone who may or may not be guilty of rape.

]

[Grouchy]

You lost me. What is "this" and who are the people Rockwell isn't helping?

I'm talking about (and I thought Spinal was too) [

Show Spoiler

the final scene in the car, at the start of the road trip, when McDormand and Rockwell plan to kill someone who may or may not be guilty of rape.

]

I am, too. I mean that he encourages this revenge crusade more for his perception of himself as the "good detective" described by Harrelson on his suicide note than for actual justice for the victims. I think this stuff is on the movie too, it's not just theorizing on my part.