Difficult and Challenging

Rating: 8/10 (14 December 2017)

The critics are practically falling all over themselves in their efforts to find new ways to praise "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri." But it's not the kind of praise somebody uses when they enjoy a picture, or are entertained by it.

Rather, the critics seem be heaping upon this movie the kind of praise you'd give to a complete stranger if he made an unflattering but surprisingly accurate observation about you in the presence of your friends-either you compliment him on his comprehension, or risk looking like a fool.

In "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri," when after seven months no arrest is made for the rape and murder of her teenaged daughter, a grieving mother rents three deserted billboards on the outskirts of town and displays on them messages designed to provoke the local police chief into placing a priority on her daughter's case, and renewing his efforts to locate and arrest her killer.

Written, produced, and directed by the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh-the writer and director of the critically-acclaimed "In Bruges" in 2008 and "Seven Psychopaths" in 2012-"Three Billboards" is being described as a black comedy. But more accurately, the picture is a tragedy which occasionally incites a sort of ironic humor. What laughter comes from the picture is rueful, self-conscious, and sometimes even nervous-chuckles with a question mark at the end.

The billboards are at first tolerated by the grieving mother's sympathetic neighbors, then openly criticized. Finally, the community begins to ostracize the woman. And after her billboards fail to achieve the desired result, she escalates her campaign to provoke the police into action, with methods which include assault, vigilantism, and eventually even domestic terrorism.

At the center of "Three Billboards" is a riveting, virtuoso performance by Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes, the grieving mother. In intimately-adjusted levels, McDormand's Mildred slowly loses her sense of rationality, and her ability to interact with society. Her difficulties and emotional agony are reflected in her eyes-as she grows more and more estranged from her neighbors, the light of reason begins to fade from her eyes, and the viewer senses she's losing her sanity, and even her soul.

Along the way, the audience's reaction is tested also. Like the townspeople of Ebbing, the viewer is at first sympathetic to the mother and patronizing of her eccentricities. But as we grow more uncomfortable with her actions-and before long are even horrified by them-we conversely become more sympathetic to the police chief, played with a sense of canny, homespun wisdom by the wonderfully-talented Woody Harrelson.

In case you haven't noticed, Woody Harrelson has matured and developed into one of our most solid, dependable, and inventive character actors. Harrelson's presence in a picture all but guarantees its quality. Those viewers who doubt the actor's ability to stray from his television persona are advised to look at Harrelson's genuinely terrifying characterization in 2013's "Out of the Furnace," filmed in and around Pittsburgh. And in "Three Billboards," Harrelson contributes a customarily thoughtful and multidimensional performance.

Martin McDonagh's script and direction of "Three Billboards" makes it heartbreakingly plain for the viewer to observe how easy it is for a person to surrender to bitterness and despair. A flashback scene halfway through showing Mildred and her family interacting with love and warmth prior to the daughter's murder becomes almost unbearable in its contrast to the bitter cynicism of the rest of the picture.

It's during the flashback that we realize that part of Mildred's mania-her growing outrageousness, and her motivation to maintain the billboards-is a hysterical need to shift the responsibility and blame for her daughter's death away from herself. And it's the growing affection we feel for the grieving mother, the police, and the townspeople of Ebbing which contributes more than any other factor to the ultimately unsettling nature of the picture's conclusion.

Already nominated for six Critics' Choice Awards, "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri" is a great film-challenging, and often difficult to watch. In seeing the residents of Ebbing Missouri, we're seeing ourselves through the eyes of outsiders-our strengths and weaknesses, our foibles and eccentricities, our reflexive and conditioned sense of justice. The success of the picture depends almost entirely upon the audience's ability and willingness to recognize and acknowledge in ourselves the unflattering realities as well as the greatness.

It's not easy to hold a mirror to ourselves and ask, "Is this how the world sees us?" Especially when the answer is, "Yes, it probably is."