So 'Ebbing' Great!

Rating: 10/10 (5 March 2018)

Billboards... Ebbing... So many "B's" but a B-movie it sure ain't... far from it actually, this is high-level film-making, a movie meaning "B" for excellence, B as in Business!
And watching some shots of Frances McDormand driving across some random Missouri road and turning her head to her passenger made me feel I was watching an older -and grouchier- version of her most iconic character Marge Gunderson. That both performances earned her Oscars is no coincidence, she was born to be Marge and Mildred, Mildred Hayes to name her. The traits are more severe-looking, age did alter her woman-next-door charm but there's something in the eyes that left room to a certain gentleness, decency and sense of humor, no matter how twisted it is.
Sense of humor indeed... in a story involving police brutality, racism, and rape, the evil trinity wrapped up into another of these typical atypical Midwest crisis, something you wouldn't believe it was possible before watching Martin McDonagh's acclaimed "Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri", the film that came so close to winning the triple crown of Best Pictures yesterday (but took home the right acting Oscars). Yet as horrific and seemingly cynical (seemingly underlined) it is, the film immediately drained from the wells of the Coen brother's masterpiece's memories. If not as close to perfect as "Fargo" is, it's as close to cinematic perfection as many recent movies confronted us to, there's just something immensely satisfying about "Billboards".
"Fargo" was crazy, wicked but remember how it ended, Marge was summoning the newly arrested criminal, telling him that there's more to life than money, and he was going to jail on what was a 'beautiful day', the masterpiece of dark humor ended with a light of hope and you could even sense remorse growing in the sociopath's eyes. Just when it became so trendy to have decent characters descending into madness and psychopathy and all the viewers secretly wishing they could loosen up a bit as far as their ethics go, here is a movie where characters start behaving like the bad guys we expect, only to discover that there was something good about them that only waited for the right opportunity to blossom. If that film didn't win the Best Picture Oscar, at least, it shows what "Crash" should have been to really deserve it.
"Fargo" and "Crash" weren't the only movie "Billboards" reminded me of, there was something in McDormand's wounded soul playing like a reminiscence of Kathy Bates' underrated performance as and in "Dolores Clairborne", a Stephen King's story that ventured into similar realms of traumas and vengeance by focusing on the tortured mind of an average woman. The parallel that can be drawn between the two performances (besides the fact that Bates should have been nominated) is the defining line of the film "Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold on to." That line encompasses every single action of Mildred Hayes, never as an excuse but an explanation. When a mother has her daughter killed, abused and savagely burnt and the investigation leads to nowhere, she can only resort to the bitchiest side of her soul and yes, some wicked sense of humor... as the billboards would be referred to as a 'joke' by one of the main concerned people, and not in a condescending way.
So how about the infamous billboards? These three unused things of the 80's in a road nobody takes, and the opportunity to 'create a buzz', at a time where Internet, twitter, Facebook attracted every attention-whore of the world, here's one hell of a clever use of medium, anachronistic, inventive (screenplay-wise very clever but wouldn't you expect that from the writer director of "In Bruges") and the starter of a chain of events that will challenge and tease all your expectations. Because it's not much the set-up that "Billboards" establishes which is its main strength but how it plays with it, toying in the process with what we would expect after watching "Fargo", "Crash" or "August Osage County". The film opens with a hardened Midwest divorced mother, a worn-out but benevolent Chief of Police targeted by the billboards played by Woody Harrelson, a redneck deputy played by the great Sam Rockwell, so many characters' tropes in a nutshell that end up being totally deconstructed, for moments of laughs, shock and some heights of emotionality you never expect (not from 'these' characters anyway).
And it's all in the deconstruction that "Billboards" work, McDonagh has just a way to make the story advances so that once you think you spotted a contrivance or felt something was going in the predictable Aesopian-arc way that the film takes a detour into a twist you didn't see while maintaining its plausibility and revealing a higher esteem on humanity. This is a journey whose starting point is a horrific act of barbarity and ending up with 'bad' people realizing that deep inside there's more room for decency than they would believe... and people who realize that just because they defend a noble cause, aren't immune to punctual bits of vileness. Now, that's challenging. And later, the film takes another path that leaves the perfect cloud of uncertainty, but I'll stop here because this is one experience I don't want to spoil, just enjoy "Billboards", it is THAT good.
The film is served by great performances, besides Oscar-winning McDormand and Rockwell, there's also Peter Dinklage who has a great shining moment and there's the so underrated Woody Harrelson who always hit the right note between pathos and humor and the neutered tone of the man who starts to take things seriously, just like this movie does but not without a level of edgy self-awareness that makes the whole thing oddly entertaining no matter how dark it is. Really, one of a kind!