The Golden Globe Award for Best Feature Film, Best Actress, Venice Film Festival Best Screenplay, "Three Billboards" won these awards almost without controversy. It has a textbook script, and it's not just Francis McDormand who has contributed extraordinary acting skills, and Sam Rockwell, who won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, has even surpassed the former to some extent. It was really a feast of performance, Lucas Hedges, who entered the public eye with "Manchester by the Sea", Woody Harrison, who only appeared in the first half, and Zellico Ivanek, who had a gloomy expression, randomly chose one of them, and more importantly, everyone did not compete, and Anzhi Ruosu completed his quota and played a balanced voice.
Before discussing the plot of the film, it is necessary to correct a concept, Martin Macdonald is first and foremost a writer, and then a director. This is not to argue about his identity, but to show that this man is a well-deserved literary genius. Macdonald began his career as early as the 1990s, until 2003, when the screenplay "Pillow Man" made him famous. His absurd writing, full of black humor, also laid the foundation for the maverick style of the future. In contrast, his film works are not many, but each one is known for its excellent playwriting.
Today's fourth film, "Three Billboards", not only inherits the director's perfect control of the script, but also plays black humor with more social significance. When people see a madman thinking seriously, it is quite ideologically impactful.
The story takes place in a small American town in the late 80s.
Mildred's daughter Angela was raped and killed outside, and Mildred's marriage to her husband came to an end. Frustrated, she and her son Robbie are dependent on each other, and as the months go by, the case remains unsolved, and the police seem to have shifted their attention elsewhere.
During a night drive, Mildred spotted three giant billboards on a remote section of the highway. She thought about it, rented the billboard, and wrote three slogans: "What's up, Sheriff Willoughby?" "Haven't you caught it yet?" "Rape kills you."
The spearhead is none other than willoughby, the chief of the town police department. As the billboards refreshed, the eyes of the whole town were drawn to this new thing, and Willoughby and the police department were also on the cusp of the storm.
But on the other side of the coin, Willoughby is suffering from pancreatic cancer and will soon die. When the pressure of public opinion pointed at him one-sidedly, his body began to be in a frequent condition, and even when he spoke, he would spew blood on the spot. After deliberating for a long time, Willoughby committed suicide by drinking a bullet, leaving behind his wife and two young daughters. This time, Mildred endured the moral ordeal.
Willoughby's death infuriated many people. His men, Dickson, angrily smashed the advertising company and pushed the company's head out of the window, thus throwing away the policeman's job.
Sympathetic to Willoughby, the townspeople burned three billboards, angering Mildred and blowing up the police station. At the time of the fire, Dixon was flipping through the files of Angela's rape and death. When he rolled out of the police station covered in flames, desperately protecting it, it was the hope of finding the real culprit for the daughter of the "arsonist" Mildred.
The theme of "Three Billboards" is hatred. But this hatred is not a pleasure to take revenge, but a tangled struggle between morality, responsibility, and emotion.
Everyone is working towards a goal, but they don't necessarily understand each other. If you love someone, you won't love enough to pluck your heart and lungs. Hate a person, do not hate to eat bones and sleep. Everyone wants to do things well, but the truth is often that most people don't do well enough, and even accept that they can't do it well, and then let it go. No one is the worst offender, but some people ask about right and wrong, say yes and wrong, and who really cares about whom.