On the Image

“What’s the law on what you can and can’t say on a billboard?”

Ghosts permeate the opening series of shots in Martin McDonagh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” as a melancholy succession of images portrays the titular billboards standing gloomy, decrepit, and abandoned. Their surfaces contain patches of old advertisements, each rendered illegible by the overlapping presence of the others. This fight to be noticed, however, is fruitless, as these billboards are long-forgotten to the townspeople of Ebbing. Seven months ago, unspeakable tragedy passed through the town by way of the brutal rape and murder of Mildred’s (Frances McDormand) daughter. The people were horrified and the police investigated, but the collective shock eventually wore off and the trail went cold, the case remaining unsolved. Mildred, then, was struck by inspiration: by putting the lost billboards to use, she could ensure that the town would never forget about the fact that closure has never come. Enormously loud text against a glaringly red background clearly signals her aggravation and calls out Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), the chief of police. Unfairly? Perhaps, but, as she says, “The buck has to stop somewhere.” Forgotten no longer, the billboards now have a message, and they quickly become the town’s center of focus. Regrettably, the film itself more resembles the billboards before their striking refurbishment than following it.

This is a movie that is technically well-crafted; Ben Davis’s gentle cinematography treats the characters with more love than we see actually afforded to anyone onscreen. The shot composition is striking throughout, particularly as the viewer is treated to visions of the billboards from behind, towering ominously, their message projected out into the world. Sarah Finn’s casting work is superb and the ensemble turns in phenomenal performances. Standout Caleb Landry Jones, who has had quite a year playing in some of 2017’s best works for film and television (namely “Get Out” and “Twin Peaks: The Return”), steals scenes in his turn as Red Welby, the advertising manager who owns the town’s billboards. Carter Burwell’s soundtrack plays nicely with the composer’s work on the Coen brothers’ ‘True Grit;” echoes of the track “The Wicked Flee” seem to resonate through this film’s thematic work.

“Three Billboard’s” technical proficiency, though elevating in many respects, serves to highlight the shortcomings that cut through the film like fault lines. Note that these problems are not with the film’s primary narrative focus, as the horrific crime at its center and subsequent fallout is handled with sensitivity. Rather, the main issue at play is that the people in the movie simply don’t feel like people, due in large part to the film continually insisting on showing them at their worst. Their softer moments of vulnerability and decency stand out like pockets of fresh air, but are too few and far between to leave lasting impressions. An idea echoed by multiple characters’ words and actions is that people are products of their environment. Unfortunately, that’s essentially the extent of their portrayal: two-dimensional products with only a thin promise of history and depth.

There are other pervasive but less overarching issues that contribute to the unevenness of “Three Billboards.” Notions of authenticity for its setting must have driven the script’s spate of slurs (of many varieties) and the marginalized people of the town that would find themselves at the receiving end of those words were among the most human in the picture. However, the film was frustratingly uninterested in their stories outside of the fragments captured by the amoral lens fixed on the central characters, and this sense of passing interest, taken in conjunction with its treatment of Dixon, a police officer who abuses his position of power and makes a career out of, as we hear described, “torturing” black citizens, is troubling. The movie also occasionally relishes in constructing situations centered on sensitive issues before segueing into a quick punchline. One particular instance dealing with domestic abuse is so overtly played for laughs that it trivializes the preceding action, enough so that all characters involved quickly shrug off the confrontation. Lastly, this is only the second of McDonagh’s works that I’ve seen (the first being “In Bruges”), but both of them present suicide in a way that I find disturbingly cold. In these worlds there’s an overly-rational air that surrounds the concept, and something almost pragmatic about the way that characters are led to it. Perhaps the main reason that this feels like an issue is a lack of context with regards to characters’ mental health, admittedly not something easily or quickly addressed, but still a piece vital to proper dialogue.

The meta-tragedy of “Three Billboards” lies in the potential that stretches beyond the film. It could have stood as a distinctly modern look for the classic western. It portrays a hard-nosed protagonist who hunts for vengeance in a land where the responsibility of upholding the law falls on any and every person who wishes for it to exist. There is a deeply distressing and relevant irony surrounding the representation of lawlessness (a tangible lawlessness manifesting in a way that entails dark consequences) in a movie so heavily involved with a town’s police station. Unfortunately, “Three Billboards” feels cynical and unwilling to sufficiently explore its themes in ways that its affectation would necessitate. If it turns out that this cynicism is the point of it all, then it’s a point that I’m content to miss.

“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is in theaters now.

Grade: C-