It’s that unmediated look that you’d love to have. your quick-wittedness. The directness with which she fixes on her counterpart, quick to react, aggressive, with a certain hardness, but never without giving the other that wide-awake attention that one so often misses – and misses. A woman in a man’s world, a grieving, angry mother: Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes fights with the weapon of language. Every dialogue is an exchange of blows, she knows how to counter, concise, targeted, witty.
For example the billboards, the old billboards on the outskirts of Ebbing, a town in Missouri. Mildred rents them for three sentences in huge letters on a red background. “Raped when she died,” reads the first plaque. “And still no arrests. How can that be, Chief Willoughby?” on the other two. Seven months ago Mildred’s daughter was raped, murdered and burned to death, the police don’t care, hence the Billboard action.
She asked the company which bad words were forbidden on such boards. The residents of Ebbing are still outraged, the Chief is popular in town. Because Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) doesn’t quite fit into this police station, where racist and sexist slurs are the order of the day and Deputy Dixon (Sam Rockwell) can’t contain his aggressive temper, especially not towards black people.
Or the scene with the priest. He sits at the kitchen table with Mildred, soothes her son, who is being bullied at school because of his mother, and begins to speak to her conscience. If only she could come to church more often… Mildred interrupts him; quietly but firmly she draws his attention to the American legal situation. It’s a criminal offense to be a member of the Crips or the Bloods on the streets of LA, isn’t it, Father? And his own gang, even those with extra club colors and clubhouses, abuse altar boys. The pastor is also complicit, as are the LA gang members. Frances McDormand’s monologue about the Church’s complicity in the abuse of minors is worth watching this film in itself.
Silent cartels and violence
Law and justice, abuse and complicity, institutionalized violence, silent cartels: “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September, was written before the Weinstein scandal. And yet it is the film of the hour, no wonder that it won the Golden Globes and is now one of the Oscar favorites with seven nominations.
Because of the powerfully eloquent screenplay by Martin McDonagh (“See Bruges … and die”), there is constant cursing, damn right to the point. Because of the complex figures that are not exhausted in the perpetrator-victim scheme. And because of an outstanding Frances McDormand, who puts on her avenging angel in worker overalls as a hunter, as a western heroine and as a female John Wayne.
What a stubborn, stubborn woman. Mildred shares a lot with her actress: Frances McDormand, 60, who has been part of the Coen clan since her debut in Blood Simple (and is married to Joel Coen), who won an Oscar for her pregnant cop in 1997’s Fargo, who likes to make himself scarce, refuses the publicity business and any glamor hysteria. Frances McDormand, who advocated for women’s rights, better roles and equal pay before MeToo and Time’s Up were invented, and who said back in 2015 that it’s not so much the lack of gender justice initiatives as the lack of more money for women . McDormand, who at the Globes gala hailed the tectonic shift now taking place in the film industry’s power structures.
Unique in the film industry
She once described her face as the map of her life and advised women not to have facelifts. Because then they erase their lives. McDormand is unique in the US film industry. And a one-of-a-kind: no make-up, fearless, with that face ennobled by wrinkles that can pull such glorious grimaces. She also has a great future as a comedian.
But she doesn’t make it easy on “Three Billboards” because Mildred doesn’t stop at verbal attacks. Are nasty kicks, Molotov cocktails and vigilantism an option? Will this woman become a perpetrator herself?
Martin McDonagh has shot an old-fashioned film in the best sense of the word, at times almost Old Testament-like, with calm shots, character actors and no show value frills. There is something daring about letting a cinema heroine communicate with old billboards in the Facebook age. At the same time, the Irish director and playwright, known for his black humor and grotesque constellations, puts the audience to the test. No one is what they appear in this portrait of the American South.
At first glance, the small town of Ebbing is populated by stereotypes, be it racist macho police officers, Mildred’s thug ex-husband (John Hawkes) with a stupid blonde girlfriend (Samara Weaving) or the small used car dealer (Peter Dinklage) who doesn’t want to that the others call him midget. The film makes fun of the gross and subtle discrimination that characterizes Ebbing’s everyday life. Because there are constant arguments about language regulations and choice of words, Donagh takes the simultaneity of violence and political correctness in America with the grain.
cop with cancer
But upon closer inspection, they all have colorful identities. Most notably Woody Harrelson as Chief Willoughby, he has pancreatic cancer, he’s dying soon, he has what it takes to turn the tide on the Hayes case. Posthumously. Again it is words that trigger actions, three letters that he leaves behind. And in the end (almost) everything is different.
In any case, it turns out Willoughy is by no means ignorant. Mildred is driven not only by pain but also by a terrible sense of guilt; that’s why she undertakes questionable transgressions. Her ex’s stupid girlfriend turns out to be not always stupid, and the plain-knit racist Dixon is amazingly adaptable. The film is not what it seems either. Not just a drama about violence against women and the persecution of the perpetrators, but about saving humanity in inhuman times. About goodness – and if there is still so much cursing. About the struggle of figuring out who deserves forgiveness and who doesn’t.
And all this in a comedy. Watch out for the turtle.
From Thursday in 16 Berlin cinemas. OmU: Babylon Kreuzberg, Fsk am Oranienplatz, Hackesche Höfe, International, cinema in the Kulturbrauerei, Odeon, Passage. OV: Cinestar Sony Center, Delphi Lux, Neues Off