You can laugh, you can cry ... Review of Three Billboards
Martin McDonagh is an internationally renowned British-Irish playwright who rarely makes films, but insolently. The short "Six-Shot" (and immediately "Oscar"), the classic "Lying Down in Bruges", the funny madhouse "Seven Psychopaths" - all these films spoke to us in a hoarse voice of a pub habitue who planted a liter of whiskey and beer and was determined to pour out his soul to the first counter, moreover, obscenely. McDonagh's new work, a seven-time Oscar nominee and a very potential winner of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is still the same foul-mouthed drinker, only he has already completely lost his girdle, got into a fight and threatens to burn down the bar, because his soul hurts so much today no urine ...... And she hurts for an unfortunate divorced woman named Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), who lives in provincial American Ebbing with her teenage son. Seven months ago, she also had a daughter, but on one of the back roads on a terrible dark night she was raped and killed. The killers have yet to be found, and, according to Mildred, solely because the cops are “too busy torturing blacks”. Seven months of seething rage and unbearable suffering made Mildred a quarrelsome, poisonous woman, rough as sandpaper, harsh as a slap in the face. Realizing that time is playing against her, the woman rents three billboards and places three phrases on them, in black and red: "Rape until she died", "And still no arrests", "How so, Sheriff Willoughby?" On Ebbing, her act has the effect of a bursting enema  Since we are dealing with a top-class playwright, almost a living classic of storytelling, you should not expect simple answers from the film. A message like "Mildred is good and the cops are bad" is from some other, most likely Hollywood movie. McDonagh challenges the audience by not living up to any of our expectations regarding the plot twists and offering to stay on the side of her character, even when she crosses the line. Her anger is, in fact, the only plot constant. Mildred Hayes is driven by pure maternal fury, her monologues are stamped and flattened, scalded with boiling water of seething pain and destructive guilt.  Against a group of authoritative men, this woman with a stubborn shaved head and a ridiculous ponytail on top of the head there is only that three billboards and her poison. Mildred's frenzy is so pure and holy that even after being polished with truths like "violence breeds violence" and "love heals", it does not lose power, does not burn out. It remains both the main character of the film and the hook on which the spectator, completely exhausted by such an emotional gallop, dangles.As McDonagh loves and knows how, a very sad story is wrapped here in a wrapper of black humor. And it would be an understatement to say that the director teeters between the funny and the dramatic. Balance is something about the Coens. And McDonagh briskly jumps between humor and horror, like an unbridled colt between two sweet carrots, trying to greedily grind both of them at once. When his humor is multiplied by horror, it's just an op. "To shout in a voice" is just in time for McDonagh. What's the balance here? An unsurpassed master of dialogues, aged in oak barrels in Galway cellars and lovingly calibrated to the last pause, Martin makes us laugh until hiccups and melt with tenderness and emotion at the most inopportune moments. He does not even think to warn that there is not one, but several first-class catharsis ahead, each of which is capable of igniting the screen with its own intensity. At some moments it may seem that all this is too much, that some scenes of violence are almost unattainable, and you don't want to laugh anymore, but here actors come to the rescue - the most valuable resource of this film.  It is the play of Francis McDormand, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson in the foreground, as well as Lucas Hedges and Peter Dinklage in the second, that does not allow Three Billboards to slide into a dark booth, over and over again returning history to its legitimate realism. As McDonagh himself admitted, when you see a skill of this level, you just “smile and give up”. As far as Frances is concerned, Mildred is her best role since Olivia Kitteridge. Mildred is Olivia on stimulants. And with all due respect to Martin's invaluable dialogues, McDormand has the gift of playing in absolute silence, without words and musical accompaniment, so that you fall in love with her heroine at first sight. But the hero Sam Rockwell - drunkard, racist and brawler Dixon - somehow just wants to hit. Paradoxically, the funniest scenes are associated with him. And this is nothing more than a useful reminder of Rockwell's extraordinary acting range, and that it is time for the Academy to pay off its debts. Give Sam his "Oscar", which they forgot to give him for "Luna 2112"!  Finally, Chief Willoughby himself performed by Harrelson ... Well, its storyline is actually a movie within a movie. If McDonagh had made a short film out of it, there would have been another Six Shot (and another golden idol to boot).The Internet seethes with discussions about how cleverly the British filmmaker dissected America with its feminism, racism, sexism and other -isms. In fact, even a poster that says "She knew" over Meryl Streep's face can be added to this debriefing. But Martin came up with his own plot long before the woman first openly complained about Weinstein - almost twenty years ago. And we, viewers, are already sick from Hollywood scandals. We don't need them in the movies. We want the cinema to touch for the living and even a little for the unhealed. "Three billboards" touch, and not at all with topicality, but with a presentiment that in a fierce struggle with his majesty with transcendent horror, if you grit your teeth and be daring, there is always a chance for him, yourself, your fears, your pain and everything in the world - take and overcome. The Topic of Article: You can laugh, you can cry ... Review of Three Billboards. |
