Three Billboards: A Modern Masterpiece - Movie Review
‘Anger begets greater anger’, a wise line said by a relatively dumb character which eventually summed up the entire point of the film.
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is a dark comedic drama about a mother who personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter’s murder when they fail to catch the culprit. The film in itself has been a source of loads of controversy regarding its use of offensive slurs and racist characters. But the gist of the film also inspired people to replicate the justice-seeking drive in real life by using billboards to call out their senators for better gun control laws.
Martin McDonagh has proven himself to be a great writer with his many plays and films like Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges. With Three Billboards, he has presented us with a story so layered with its message that I was dumbstruck for an entire day and constantly thinking about it for the rest of the week, eventually watching it once more that cemented my admiration for it.
Mildred Hayes, our main lead is an epitome of a strong character. She is just as hardcore as she is feminine, a tough balance for a writer to strike. She has a genuine reason to be angry and we as the audience stand by her. But there also comes a turning point in the movie where we (along with her) are forced to question her actions.
Another remarkable character is of Officer Dixon who is very clearly a racist bigot with slow wit and a penchant for violence, who also arguably received a redeemable storyline, although that is something the audience have to decide for themselves as his actions lead to the weighty question of when can a person be redeemed if so, and should we be judging them for the person they are today or their past actions?
Bill Willoughby, the chief of town police worked more as reminder for love and why hate can never solve anything.
The great thing about McDonagh’s writing is his ability to craft well-rounded characters that may do terrible things but also show lots of humanity. This factor tends to divide his viewers into siding with them, eventually becoming a source of intense but much-needed discussions about redemption and human behavior.
Three Billboards shows us time and time again how unproductive anger can be. There are multiple violent scenes of Mildred, some verbal other physical, and there’s no doubt that they were extremely satisfying to watch, but the fact remains that they were also giving us zero hope in finding her daughter’s murderer or knowing that she’ll ever be able to accept her death.
Three Billboards will stand the test of time as one of the angriest movies ever made; trying to tell you that anger is not the answer. It teaches people that while this blood-boiling emotion is important to implement action, one must always choose love and kindness over any act of violence as there can never be a price big enough for peace of mind.
Rating: ★★★★☆
