Three Things People Don't Get - EXPLAINED

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2018)

What do you do, after your daughter is raped and murdered? Or after your father/hero dies? Or after you learn you will very soon die of an incurable disease, leaving a wife and children?
You get angry. Angry at everything and everybody; angry at life. That is the motor at the heart of this brilliantly written film. It propels the viewer on a roller-coaster ride of emotions, down and up, down and further down and up again.
Putting them on a collision course with the lovingly-sketched community, that anger makes them do fearful things, like put of billboards, drill a dentist's thumb, get drunk, and beat up a black man, If you let it, anger will even turn you into a one-person wrecking crew; you throw a man out of second-floor window, or lob molotov cocktails at the police station. On the other hand, if, like Willoughby, you understand it, you can leave beautiful memories. It's your call.
But how do you get from A to B? Well, first, you have to figure out where A is.
What really sets this film apart is how it conveys what's BEHIND the anger. So the first thing to get is that the music is the key to understanding the film. In fact, it's almost like an opera. Right from the opening
"'Tis the Last Rose of Summer,
Left blooming alone. . . .
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones have flown,
Oh, who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"
These words depicting the passing of love, beauty, and, ultimately, life itself, transport the viewer at once to the profound melancholy at the heart of the film.
Each of the three main characters, Mildred, Dixon, and Willoughby struggles, stricken by a sense of the evanescence of life and the finality of death.

Frances McDormand is splendid at conveying the kaleidoscope of emotions, from steely resolve to despair to volcanic wrath. Equally fine are Sam Rockwell as Dixon and Woody Harrelson as Willoughby.
Keep in mind, though, that this is NOT REALISM! Don't expect it to "make sense." After all, the heart doesn't make sense.
"Anger begets only anger." They both see - Mildred when she sees that her anger has almost cost a man his life - that they can't go on as before, but each still must find the way to set anger aside:
"Alone" is a key word. That is why the emotional climax comes when Mildred and Dixon make the decision to work TOGETHER.
So the third thing to understand is that this is NOT A POLICE PROCEDURAL It's not about finding the guilty man. Instead, it is about the heart, how it is wounded, and how it is healed.
Some viewers have complained that the scene is too slow. But I think that it needs time to show both how very, very difficult it is for each of them, and that they understand that there is no going back.
By the closing scene, they haven't forgotten their losses, but, as the tender version of "Buckskin Stallion Blues" suggests, they have put it behind them and they are ready, however tentatively, to reenter life.