FRANCIS MCDOORMAN DON'T DESERVE NO OSCAR 4 THIS.

Rating: 5/10 (14 December 2017)

Now that I have your attention...
Writing and directing one's own movie has always been a dangerous undertaking with often fatal consequences, but one which can never work (I thought we'd learned this lesson) unless the auteur is brutally honest and objective about his vision, and takes her creative and professional ego out back and shoots it in the head. The undertaking has brought down even titans and more than a few teenie titans: Welles, Cimino and Kostner, to single out but a few who come speedily to mind. And not even those two wunderbrÃ¼der the Coens have the stones to go it alone. The writer/director of 3 Billboards takes his place among the former with this film.
I hate to be a buzz killer, but did you guys see the same movie I did? 3 Billboards should be requisite study in every legitimate and phony film school across America for its shameless, self-indulgent display of virtually every pitfall a writer/director can fall into and break his neck. This is the movie you end up with when a writer/director (W/D) falls in love with every word he scrawls and any masturbatory idea that occurs to him and his libidinous muse on the set. A confused, confusing and, at times, downright silly mishmash of tones: variously dramatic or melodramatic amid flights of low and high comic relief, with infuriating moments of satire and farce (throw enough darts, something'll stick), all the while daring our hearts to remain in a solid state after every full-term, pregnant pause. Maddeningly slow paced and often ah-c'mon-improbable, including its longed-for, but much-delayed "are-you-frikkin'-kiddin'-me" ending. A two-hour-plus flip of the bird in the face of the Unities, no sin in itself, to be sure, but before you break artistic rules, learn why they were made in the first place. As a result, this is a movie written and directed by one delusional person that looks like it had two directors, at least, and a committee of writers, each with a different take on, and a bunch of kool, unrelated cinematic ideas for, three related/unrelated stories. I'd love to know what the Coens think of this movie. Were they on the floor howling or on their knees begging him to let them re-cut the film?
And what really got me was that every few minutes there were scenes nearing perfection: the first 20 minutes; that riveting scene with Frances and Woody on the yard swing; Woody and his wife at the fateful paddock. (Hey, W/D, why's his wife foreign-born? What was that about? Another inspired distraction that amounts to zip? Oh...diversity...ah-huh...yes...lots of diversity in MO) He did let one moment slip by, though, when younger cop, with shotgun in hand and light bulbs of self-awareness and self-actualization going off all around him, takes leave of his repulsive sloth...sorry...dozing mother. I was praying for a predictable, albeit unedited, confession of guilt, replete with flashbacks and a dream ballet, followed by a graphic murder/suicide and a quick wrap-up. No such luck. W/D has a real thing for red herrings.
People spend a whole lot of time saying goodbye in this movie or staring blankly, but bravely, into a vague, unforeseeable future or backwards into murky pasts fraught with anger and regret. Sometime close to that illusive ending, I began to fear an intermission was looming and that two more hours of pickled herring were in store for me. My restless leg syndrome was kicking up, I had to piss and, although I don't smoke, I needed a cigarette bad. Frances was saying goodbye to the younger cop (I know, you all know that actor's name except me)....let's say the cop's name was Wilbur. The screenplay goes something like this...again and again and again...
Younger cop Wilbur heads for door. Frances, CU in profile, lest her face betray a widening crack in her grief-fueled temporary insanity, stops him with:
FRANCES: Wilbur...
Wilbur halts at door. He turns. He is pulled into focus and Frances goes fuzzy. (I'm thinking,"I couldn't have see this movie already...") The emotional difficulty for both of them at this moment is palpable. A silence falls. ("...maybe I need to #2")

WILBUR: Yeah?
This is more difficult than she thought. She pauses to swallow
her courage and gather her pride. (An eighteen-wheeler passes)
FRANCES (back in focus); a Chekhovian Pause (The Six-Oh-Eight thunders by), then: Thanks...
Wilbur stares at this remarkable, yet maddening, woman in silence for a while, (Just how much is a pack of Reds these days?) then slowly turns and exits. Slowly.
Slow dissolve.
I wanted to scream out the lines! It takes one cotton-pickin' second to say WilburYeahThanks. Not fifteen. Unless you have an unnatural relationship with your own screenplay. Once upon a time, there was a director who used to say that pauses were expensive and had to be spent carefully. They don't accomplish what amateurs think they do. They ruin pace, insult the audience and are probably the tritest signal of cheap sentimentality.
Frances, thank you thank you for your clipped delivery of that ridiculous monologue about the Crips and the Bloods. And please say you refused to memorize it. I hope they put that extended-till-it-snapped metaphor on a Teleprompter for you.
Supporting roles: OK, I'm going to be nice and not mention any names which I won't remember anyway, because I bet a lot of inexperienced actors are thinking this was their big break, and, given our current atmosphere of Trump-era credulity, it just might be, but, like my old friend Harry Pebbel told me...oh, God...years and years ago, "For nothing, you get nothing." There are a dozen amateur performances in this movie reflecting a tight acting budget beyond its stars: raw, unrehearsed young actors and day players, struggling with stagy, didactic or overstated lines of bumpy dialogue and incongruous comedy.
But wait! Along comes another supporting player, the new Police Chief. A black man. Good choice. Nice touch of irony within the context of the film and maybe the kick in the ass this crashing bore needs. But then the guy opened his mouth...
Now, it is unquestionably possible for anyone with an ear to learn to speak Eastern Standard English. That's the dialect American stage actors are, or used to be, required to learn. I believe it only survives indigenously in an island of territory somewhere around the border of New York and Connecticut. I do not doubt that black Americans have grown up in that area and could have chosen to assimilate that style of speech. But. I'll bet the ranch that not one of them has ever aspired to the position of Chief of Police of a backwater Missouri burg. This was a directorial choice (it's not an acting one) that, though perhaps cheered by guilt-ridden Hollywood revisionists and other champions of Fake News (Fake News/Fake Messages: same difference), was utterly improbable and downright laughable. In fact, I did laugh. Sidney Poitier had or often used (dunno which) a very distinctive dialect more than 60 years ago. It was erudite, cultured and completely comprehensible (unlike many of the actors in this flick, especially Younger Cop). It was also unabashedly African-American. In In The Heat Of The Night, though he sounded like he could very well have been to college, he, most assuredly, did not sound like he went to Yale School of Drama, but abandoned the theater for a career in Public Safety.
The leads: I bet this looked like a great idea on paper, and presuming pitiless cuts, massive rewrites and objective editing, it's easy to see how Frances and Woody were attracted to the project early on. Woody looks and sounds great, a real imposing and contrasting presence in a movie brimming with homely people. Frances McDormand is a national treasure. She is never bad. A movie may be, but she cannot be, because of the roles she chooses and the richness of her characterizations. She is, and will remain forever, original, engaging and intriguing, like Geraldine Page, Judi Dench, Bette Davis and a few other fortunates whom the Hollywood Powers-That-Be never tried (or failed) to turn into glamor pusses. But an Oscar for this mess? No. Not even though I would have walked out after one hour of abuse, if I hadn't, as per usual, been mesmerized by the way this actor fleshes-out, internalizes, communicates and believes in her characters. No, not even though I'm still haunted by the chilling lack of conscience and humanity in her Undead eyes. Other more worthy and Oscar-worthy movies are, doubtless, in the cards for her. If she does win, I'll content myself with the idea that she won the sympathy vote for not walking out in mid-production, claiming health issues. Or maybe they had money in the thing. Whatever. Younger Cop? Sorry, I thought he really blew until the last half hour when his character grew a set and/or that other director, maybe, took over.
This movie tries to tell three little stories simultaneously (Yeah, yeah, I get it: three billboards, three stories), pretty much succeeds with one (I'll let you decide which) and conflates the other two to near absurdity.
But I thought the sound track was first rate.