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Billboards raise awkward questions
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FRANCES McDormand’s face is one of the first things you see in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and it’s impossible not to be struck by its pure decency.
Perhaps it’s a result of all the other roles we’ve seen this uniquely fearless actress play. But you look at her face and you think: This person has a moral compass. Her side is the right one. We will be safe there.
And that’s the way it seems for a while, until suddenly it isn’t quite so simple.
It’s a credit both to writer-director Martin McDonagh and to McDormand’s performance, her best since her Oscar-winning turn in “Fargo,” that we don’t see this coming nearly soon enough to steel ourselves.
McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a mother who’s suffered unimaginable loss: the rape, murder and incineration of her teen daughter. The film begins 7 months later, as Hayes is driving down a road near her home. She stops and stares at three dilapidated billboards.
She heads to the town advertising office, and hands over a wad of cash. Soon, those billboards will be painted bright red, and emblazoned with three messages: “Raped While Dying.” ‘’And Still No Arrests?” “How Come, Chief Willoughby?”
A grieving mother searching for answers from lazy police. What could be wrong with that? Our righteous anger intensifies as a self-satisfied priest comes to her home, sips tea in her kitchen, and explains that she’s out of line. Mildred lectures right back, telling him that he is complicit, as a member of the church, in church sex abuse. She tells him to get out of her kitchen. So much for black and white. “Three Billboards” is a veritable study in gray. Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) comes to visit, and he’s a decent and caring guy. The billboards are unfair, he tells her: It’s not easy to catch a killer.
There are no clear heroes here, and no clear villains, and needless to say, one should not expect to take away any easy lessons, either.
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