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I feel like this movie does the easiest, cheapest thing in the world by setting up a protagonist in McDormand who’s armed with an unassailably righteous anger, and then giving her a bunch of cheap cardboard cutouts to beat up for the audience’s entertainment. Who could possibly begrudge this woman her grief? Well, here’s an obese dentist who loves cops and hates justice for rapists. Here’s a bitchy local news reporter who has apparently been given free reign by her station to editorialize on local events she reports at her discretion. Here’s a drifting rape and immolation enthusiast who decides to intimidate some woman that a bad thing happened to, for reasons. (Seriously, how does this guy even know who she is, and why does he care? Did he read about her in the newspaper? Did he pass by the billboards and look up the story behind it? If he just happened upon the billboards, does that mean he’s lost or a retard?) The fact that there is such a large supply of people openly antagonistic toward this woman reminds me a bit of how, in the original Death Wish, Charles Bronson is assailed by armed criminals basically every time he walks outside, lest he actually have to seek them out and risk losing audience sympathy. It seems like the worst thing about being in McDormand's position irl is that there wouldn't be anyone to shout at, no one that you could aim your anger at. She could suspect, rightly, that behind closed doors people would be rolling their eyes at her crusade and thinking it was time for her to let go and move on with her life. But they wouldn't confront her about it and she'd be offered nothing by half-sincere sympathy. I don't know, seems like that would be much more frustrating that what she faces in the cartoon world of this movie. As it is, the movie doesn’t have much to offer us beyond catharsis in the form of Francis McDormand saying “gently caress” to a bunch of bad and incompetent people. Not that that couldn’t be a good thing, but this movie is so silly, and so transparent in its manipulations and its eagerness to please the audience, that it’s just not a lot of fun.
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Feb 12, 2018 03:35
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I didn't care for the movie, btw Edit: one more note, I understand that the whole point of the billboards is to be confrontational, and to force people to confront the matter with something more than empty offerings of sympathy. I get that. It doesn't mean that the way people respond to her being confrontational is believable. General Dog fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 03:39
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General Dog posted:I feel like this movie does the easiest, cheapest thing in the world by setting up a protagonist in McDormand who’s armed with an unassailably righteous anger, and then giving her a bunch of cheap cardboard cutouts to beat up for the audience’s entertainment. For what it's worth, I really responded to this movie precisely because when I saw it, I felt like it zagged on me in making McDormand's grief and anger ugly and less sympathetic. Obviously it starts out as you mention with some cretins being convenient punching bags for McDormand, but by the end of it, she's committing arson, mutilating a cop, and then essentially conspiring to commit a murder. By the end of it, I just saw the film as a subversion of the idea of a righteous anger that covers over a multitude of sins. It felt like the anti-Death Wish to me in that it painted her at-one-time-justified rage and grief as almost a virus in the town that spreads misery instead of transformative healthy change. Someone traumatized her, she traumatized others, and the whole thing just eats away at anyone in the vicinity. Now, this may make it a NIHILISTIC film, but at least when I saw it, I never felt that we were supposed to think McDormand was a good person doing good things by the end.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:12
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She's essentially a violent lunatic who can't let go, which allegories nicely with a lot of people in real life who want others to unjustly atone out of a selfish desire for reparation.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:43
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mary had a little clam posted:For what it's worth, I really responded to this movie precisely because when I saw it, I felt like it zagged on me in making McDormand's grief and anger ugly and less sympathetic. Obviously it starts out as you mention with some cretins being convenient punching bags for McDormand, but by the end of it, she's committing arson, mutilating a cop, and then essentially conspiring to commit a murder. No, there's not just that, there's hope as well - she walks away from her terrible ex and it's a coin-flip about whether or not she goes to kill that guy or admits its futility. I don't think it's hopeful, but it paints a more complicated picture than that of a doomed woman.
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Mar 5, 2018 21:53
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I'm fine with where this film did end up, or didn't end up. It was well directed and acted but I can't say it was in my top 5. I don't think Martin McDonagh has quite topped In Bruges for me. Seven Psychopaths gets a lotta run here, but it was just an okay Tarantino riff for me. In Bruges > Three Billboards > Seven Psychopaths, imo
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Mar 6, 2018 17:29
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seven psychopaths was trash
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Mar 7, 2018 06:06
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I disliked Seven Psychopaths the first time I watched it, but it's grown on me each successive time. I think hanging a lampshade on the female roles still isn't as clever as the movie thinks it is, but it crept up on me. I agree with Punkin Spunkin's ranking though.
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Mar 7, 2018 06:09
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You're not at all supposed to think Mildred's anger is righteous. That was the whole point of the early conversation between her and Willoughby, when he's trying to point out that there just weren't any leads to follow and literally nothing to be done. Meanwhile, Mildred is demanding he get blood from every man in town without a hint of irony. Mildred is insane with grief and anger and at no point does the movie act like this is a good or healthy thing.
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Mar 7, 2018 22:13
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Yeah; that was my takeaway even while sitting in the theater. Film starts and, based on the trailers, I was fully ready to take her side. And the movie keeps you on her side for a few minutes. But it's not long before it's very VERY clear that while her anger and grief is justified, the actions she's taking are not.
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Mar 8, 2018 02:00
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Yeah, but she's constantly confronted with cartoonishly terrible, agressive people in contrived situations where you have no choice but to take her side (torture dentist, travelling rape enthusiast, concerned priest, etc.)
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Mar 8, 2018 04:54
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I wasn't really compelled to take Mildred or anyone's side really. Let's face it, most of the cast is made up of pathetic, flawed assholes, and even if some of the scenarios did feel somewhat contrived, I wasn't really rooting for anyone. If anyone comes off somewhat well, it's Wellby, the guy who sold the billboards, who just seems like a decent man who's sympathetic but trying to run a business. And Mildred's son, who's name escapes me, who's obviously just a kid trying to get along. (And Mildred's black friend, who wasn't really characterized well enough to feel anything about, a serious flaw, I admit).
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Mar 8, 2018 05:39
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I finally saw this and loved every weird, hilarious, awful, sad moment of it. I didn't quite buy into Harrelson's line-reading of the suicide note, as it was very hokey but everything else landed for me, especially Dinklage's small role and everything about McDormand. e: Catching up on the thread, I'm surprised nobody else seems to have talked about what I thought was a pretty clear implication that Mildred and her ex had beaten each other up in equal measure (both physically and mentally) and neither of them was a clearly better person precision fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Mar 8, 2018 |
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Mar 8, 2018 19:25
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So was this movie marketed as a straight-faced serious drama or something? Because holy cow some of the reactions I'm seeing strike me as weird for what to me was a pretty simple movie (I basically went into it with this thread and the fact that it got Oscar noms as my only background).General Dog posted:Not that that couldn’t be a good thing, but this movie is so silly, and so transparent in its manipulations Well, yeah, it's a comedy. The kind of pitch-black comedy that gets put under "drama" in storefronts because of its heaviness, but a comedy nonetheless. Punkin Spunkin posted:to touch on this a lil more...I liked Three Billboards (still enough to put it in my top 10 2017) but I still genuinely find it less enjoyable and bleaker and more unsympathetic than mother! which is saying a lot. At least you feel for Jennifer Lawrence in mother! whereas every single character in Three Billboards is for the most part repugnant. I guess I live in a bubble, a lot of us do, but we don't humanize people who drop friend of the family and human being every other line. They don't deserve that. I think I can relate to your feelings - there are some movies that depict things that simply hit too close to home and make me nearly squirm and cringe in my discomfort. It's a case of genuine, honest-to-god triggering, I think.
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Mar 8, 2018 20:08
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lizardman posted:So was this movie marketed as a straight-faced serious drama or something? Movies like this are really hard to describe succinctly, in part because very few directors make them (Hal Hartley, especially his early stuff, and the Coens, off the top of my head). "Abstract, absurdist meditation on universal human themes as viewed through a strangely specific lens" is a bit longer than "drama".
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Mar 8, 2018 20:14
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McDonagh is pretty specifically a writer of grotesque black comedy so the weirder elements of Three Billboards are the parts that (apparently?) try to be genuine drama, like the goofy deer scene, which is part of why it scanned as parody to me - it felt like something out of Father Ted.
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Mar 8, 2018 20:29
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The deer scene was honestly baffling, I can't believe it was meant to be serious but it didn't clearly seem to be parody either. Just an entirely odd choice and not one I liked much.
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Mar 8, 2018 20:35
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Some more thoughts: - I get that by the time the movie ends it has said all that it needed to say, but cutting it right there didn't work for me. Even if it may not matter to the story whether they go through with it or not, come on, pick one. - Page 2 of this thread goes on a semi-derail that is baffling to me. If the movie wanted us to think the man they're going after may still be the one responsible for Mildred's daughter's death after all, it would give us a reason to, even if it was trying to ambiguous about it. There's also a lot of talk about said character being a psychopath, and while there's nothing in the diegesis to refute this, I think going by the movie's theme the below is probably the more probable take on him: MajorB posted:It's possible that the billboards and the story surrounding them triggered him because he himself had coincidentally done something very similar which was covered up by the military. He likely projected his own guilt and paranoia onto the billboards and the implication that Willoughby is complicit in the crime through inaction. Keeping in mind "hate begets hate", the murder-rapist likely committed his atrocity in retaliation for violence done to him or his friends, his reaction to Mildred was, if not guilt, then at least defensiveness - gently caress you lady you don't even know me or what I've been through, etc.. - Note the fire imagery: hatred spreads like a fire, and the more you fuel the hate the more it spreads. - I kept getting reminded of the Middle East: obviously the military guy who was stationed somewhere confidential and "sandy", the whole mindset of "well this guy wasn't the one who hurt you but I'm pretty darn sure he's a bad dude so let's go get 'em anyway!" felt like how we got into Iraq in a nutshell, and (this one is admittedly just me) the whole imagery of Mildred chucking the molotov cocktails and the way she was dressed while doing it felt evocative to me. The first bit's the only for-sure one, but it makes me wonder if there's a larger allegory there or if it was just a moment of "hey does this whole situation remind you of something?"
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Mar 8, 2018 21:26
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the deer just made me kinda roll my eyes not as much as the over the top love everyone gives to Woody and not as much as his wife's shifting accent(s) though the whole catholic rant felt like it was inserted in from another movie too (just like the ex-husband's young GF and the humor she injected), but Frances McDormand gave it an entertaining run so w/e
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Mar 8, 2018 22:51
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precision posted:e: Catching up on the thread, I'm surprised nobody else seems to have talked about what I thought was a pretty clear implication that Mildred and her ex had beaten each other up in equal measure (both physically and mentally) and neither of them was a clearly better person uhhhhhh.........what?
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Mar 9, 2018 12:13
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The deer scene is mildred not having to put on a tough face for other people, she lets her guard down and actually says what she feels
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Mar 11, 2018 05:34
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got any sevens posted:The deer scene is mildred not having to put on a tough face for other people, she lets her guard down and actually says what she feels Yes that is the content of the scene.
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Mar 11, 2018 05:34
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The deer scene is Mildred rejecting the idea that the universe is trying to tell her something by this unusual run-in with nature. Her daughter is not visit her in the form of a deer to tell her to relinquish her grudge. I guess in the grander theme of "how do you live with so much pain" showing Mildred unwilling to accept a comforting fantasy make sense, but the scene itself has a strange magical realism vibe that's really out of step with the rest of the film.
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Mar 11, 2018 07:45
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The deer scene was some truly awful CGI.
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Mar 11, 2018 23:13
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General Dog posted:
Tbh I think this is kind of the movie's thesis, that chasing catharsis can temporarily fill a void but is ultimately empty and pointless. Frances Mcdormand keeps moving and escalating her crusade for nothing against everyone because she can't bear to stop. That's what the ending is, they need something to focus their pain on and to give them purpose even if it's this unrelated vigilante murder of some dude they don't even know for a crime that may not have happened, and they basically realize how foolish it is. Tender Bender fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Mar 12, 2018 |
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Mar 12, 2018 00:06
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Sierra Nevadan posted:The deer scene was some truly awful CGI. That was a real deer. I know, I was surprised to find out as well.
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Mar 12, 2018 01:37
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I thought this movie was funny and I liked the scenes like Woody Harrelson's fantasy of his brave actions being contrasted with the reality of the aftermath of his killing himself. There were a lot of dopey (ok abusive dude wasnt that dopey) guys dating or married to ultra-hot babes and you get the sense they see a much gentler and easier world than the other characters - just how rough things would get for mildred after his death was beyond Willoughby's comprehension. From their perspective the content of the billboards was truly offensive, but from the characters who had it rougher in life (all three of the black characters, the dwarf, and mildred, kinda, but she sort of gets it both ways) some offensive billboards don't matter at all. The last scene I certainly saw as a progression for mildred and dixon because they were moving from the particular to the general, but tbh I found that soldier guy spooky as heck. Surprised this movie became so controversial. No Wave fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 14:00
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It invokes racism and police brutality but fails to really say anything about them, and a lot of people are kind of sick of that poo poo under the current political climate.
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Mar 26, 2018 14:31
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It says the the most comfortable characters (dare i say... the privileged ones?) are the most complacent about it, Willoughby seems to believe he's leaving a perfect world behind and his comfy words are what keep Dixon from noticing that the house is on fire. The main characters are certainly all white though, no question about that.
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Mar 26, 2018 14:53
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No Wave posted:It says the the most comfortable characters (dare i say... the privileged ones?) are the most complacent about it, Willoughby seems to believe he's leaving a perfect world behind and his comfy words are what keep Dixon from noticing that the house is on fire. The main characters are certainly all white though, no question about that. Yeah, and under the current political climate it shouldn't be a surprise that yet another story about privilege that focuses on white people just not getting it isn't welcomed with open arms by everybody. I like the film and I sure as gently caress don't think it's 2017's Crash like a lot of people have said, but I'm not confused as to why some people take exception to a movie that reduced "tortured a black man" to character description.
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Mar 26, 2018 18:54
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General Dog posted:I feel like this movie does the easiest, cheapest thing in the world by setting up a protagonist in McDormand who’s armed with an unassailably righteous anger, and then giving her a bunch of cheap cardboard cutouts to beat up for the audience’s entertainment. Not exactly - the billboards actually have nothing to do with with the death of the daughter. The billboards represent a failure, an inability to articulate the real problems - i.e. the rape in the church, the torture of the (notably unnamed) ‘black guy’. The filmmakers go with the somewhat tasteless metaphor that the daughter, once raped and tortured, literally turns black so that she can serve as a metaphor for all suffering, in the abstract. So the failure of the movie is not that McDormand is “unassailably righteous”, but that she isn’t - her protest is too plainly useless - devised to fail. McDormand is far too self-aware to be doing this unintentionally; she has multiple speeches where she clearly expresses what her true problems are - cops are gang, and they’re covering up torture. Case closed. So why her ridiculous demand for a global surveillance death-machine from Captain America: Winter Soldier? Obviously it’s so that she can revel in her impotence. McDormand comes unfortunately close to the right-wing logic that, so long as she remains powerless and despised, she is entitled to do anything she wants. (See Harrelson’s supremacist character in the last Apes movie, who uses his feelings of powerlessness as a justification: “You are impressive. Smart as hell. You're stronger than we are.”) And yet we have a half-dozen liberal characters supporting McDormand as she indulges in a goose chase and distracts from the actual problems - including Harrelson. Ultimately everyone in the film is a liberal. Even in her grievances, McDormand exemplifies the culture of complaint: saying “rape-death is bad” over and over, but expecting someone else to come up with the solution. ‘Raising awareness’ as the end-goal. The subtext of Harrelson’s suicide note, where he says that the suicide was absolutely not because of the billboards, is of course that it was totally because of the billboards. Harrelson, who stresses civil liberties and gradualist reform, pays to leave the ads up as a monument to his ultimate failure and a message to his more-progressive replacement. And of course the biggest twist is that McDormand ‘went too far’ by attacking the police as an institution. She didn’t believe enough in gradualism, and is chastised for it. “We [cops] aren’t all the enemy, you know.” The new chief is one of the three black characters whose sole character trait is, collectively, ‘being black’ and ‘voicing approval/disapproval of how the white characters seek justice’. Rockwell’s ostensible redemption, for example, is marked by how the black couple in the bar come to his rescue by shouting “he’s a cop!” That is to say that he’s earned the black couple’s recognition - is no longer a bad cop. The whole film is really a therapeutic narrative about Harrelson as a humanist Jesus gently chastising the ‘extremists’, while celebrating their shared human foibles in a paternalistic way. Like, aw shucks, Rockwell just did a torture because his daddy done passed away - and McDormand just missed her daughter. It’s the same apolitics as Marvel’s Black Panther. It’s Trump’s little note reminding him to say “I hear you.”
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Mar 26, 2018 19:13
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:McDormand comes unfortunately close to the right-wing logic that, so long as she remains powerless and despised, she is entitled to do anything she wants. What makes a right wing resistance different from a left wing one?
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Mar 26, 2018 20:31
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The new chief is one of the three black characters whose sole character trait is, collectively, ‘being black’ and ‘voicing approval/disapproval of how the white characters seek justice’. Rockwell’s ostensible redemption, for example, is marked by how the black couple in the bar come to his rescue by shouting “he’s a cop!” That is to say that he’s earned the black couple’s recognition - is no longer a bad cop.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:49
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I agree w/r/t the role the black characters play. But I'm not 100% sure that's what "he's a cop" meant... in terms of plot ofc it was them trying to get soldier man to think of his own safety, but I thought their sympathy for dixon was only because he was so pathetic and suffering. Ok he was always pathetic, just suffering i guess. I don't think they ever accepted him as someone worthy of responsibility/authority/special rights. My main disagreement with SMG's interpretation is that I don't think Willoughby's role is so uncritically presented and his long note to Dixon - including dictating to him that his real dream was becoming a detective - is what keeps Dixon from noticing the police station is on fire. It's Willoughby's protection (and his presenting himself as the moral center of the universe) that let dixon become as depraved as he did. No Wave fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 21:26
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Uncle Wemus posted:What makes a right wing resistance different from a left wing one? Well you need to take a step back there, because there are no leftist characters in this film. (Perhaps the only way to redeem Three Billboards is to read the whole enterprise as illustrative of a fundamental inability of Americans to conceive of socio-economic justice. Leftism is alien to the universe of the film.) “What is wrong with the complaint of the truly deprivileged is that, instead of undermining the position of the Other, they still address It: they, translating their demand into legalistic complaint, confirm the Other in its position by their very attack.” -Zizek The (main/only) difference between America’s right and its center is that the right falsely perceives white men as the damaged, deprivileged minority. The right-wing fashion today is to appropriate the language of multiculturalism, tolerance and so-on. So today’s fascists are parasitically attached to liberalism, deploying slogans like ‘Men’s Rights’, ‘All Lives Matter’ and ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ - effectively claiming that they are black gay women so that the liberal-capitalist Other will acknowledge and take pity on them. (See also: libertarian attempts to make ‘nerd’ into an ethnicity.) McDormand’s protest is, at least, based on her identity as a woman with black friends. But we should strongly emphasize the ‘least’ in that sentence. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 21:38
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Why does Mildred wear coveralls all the time when she works at a boutique store
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Mar 27, 2018 16:01
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It's a gift shop, but the coveralls seem to be of her own choice, I don't remember her boss wearing them.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:02
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there wolf posted:It invokes racism and police brutality but fails to really say anything about them, and a lot of people are kind of sick of that poo poo under the current political climate. The weirdest thing about the dissenters of the movie is that not only does it say something about the current political climate, I have to imagine that what it says (which is tantamount to #NotAllWhatever) should be quite a bit more irksome to these folks than simply not commentating.
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Mar 28, 2018 17:24
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Hand Knit posted:I just want to underline this because I think it really is something notable that this movie ends with them setting out to kill an Iraq War vet for something he did in Iraq. It makes for a hell of a contrast/companion to the throughline of police brutality and racism. I came here to see if my personal theory about Mr. Idaho is discussed, and not seeing it in the thread. My take: While he is a war veteran (no reason to doubt what the chief turned up), I don't at all think he committed the rape whether in Missouri or in Iraq. I think he's just a fabulist who was in the area, saw Mildred in the news and went to gently caress with her just out of sick humor. And then seeing more potential to gently caress with people, he lies to his credulous bar-buddy and claims that he's the one that committed the famous crime that's all in the news, last time he passed through town, even though he didn't and wasn't even around to do it. I think assuming that he committed a very similar crime overseas is way more complicated an explanation, and the simpler one is that he just makes poo poo up to gently caress with people and coincidentally is overheard during his fake-confession and at the end is quite possibly going to get murdered for something he never did, simply because he unintentionally stumbled across two really broken people while loving around. I don't follow all the other movie boards, but has this possibility been analyzed elsewhere?
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Mar 29, 2018 06:28
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There are other movie boards?
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Mar 29, 2018 07:14
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