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Author:Yuichi Nan(from Douban)
Source: https://movie.douban.com/review/8801932/
When the Venetian Film Festival's pre-screening patch was finished, three billboards standing on the edge of a desolate highway came into view, and the song "The Last Rose of Summer" sounded, we knew that Martin Macdonald, who had been influenced by Celtic culture since childhood, had returned.
The story takes place in a small town in the United States. The heroine played by Francis McDormand is a mother who has lost her daughter, but the murder of her daughter has not been resolved, and the murderer is still at large. Seeing that the hope of solving the case slowly faded, the conflict between the decisive mother and the inactive police in the town became increasingly acute, and she borrowed three billboards to question the sheriff in charge of the case, setting off an uproar in the town, and many characters were involved in bloody and violent disputes.
This is a typical Martin-MacDonald-esque story. But it doesn't have the witty context of its predecessor, Seven Neurotics, in which the protagonists experience a terrible dispute just because of a dog. Instead, the film returns to the absurd sadness of its debut film, Killer No Holiday. In his debut, he does not portray how the killers perform their tasks, but describes the "holidays" of the two protagonists in Bruges, even though the killers are far away from the mission, but the killing and plasma are still like shadows, and behind the characters played by Colin Farrell, we can feel the core of the tragedy.
The characters of "Three Billboards" have a strong two-sidedness. Although the mother stood on the high ground of jurisprudence, the sheriff in charge of the case was suffering from cancer, and she was placed in a moral trough. Behind the mother's strong, stubborn personality, there is also a reckless side, and it is this impulse that brings the event into an unpredictable situation. At the same time, the most touching clip of the movie is her only affectionate plot, when she sees a deer under a billboard, it reveals a rich maternal brilliance belonging to women, which can be described as moving.
Francis McDormand is a perfect fit for the role. As the heroine of "Ice Storm" and as an Oscar winner, she uses vivid acting skills to interpret the complex layers of this character.
Of course, the character impresses the audience, thanks to Martin MacDonald's good at shaping characters, he can portray the three-dimensional image of the heroine's ex-husband's current girlfriend in a few strokes: a vase that often chatters about some truths, but there is no real talent, which can be said to be very compatible with the violent ex-husband. Martin has always been fair in dealing with good and evil.
In Detective Dixon, we can see his insight and attitude to real social problems, and this high-profile detective shows a deep Oedipal complex while bringing out a distinct homophobic and violent tendency. And the rich details allow us to deduce that he is not only homophobic, but also gay himself, and his mother knows her son well. The addition of Peter Dinrage also continues Martin's continued focus on the dwar population, and Dinklage calls himself dwarf and has no "suicidal tendencies".
Therefore, in the process of watching, the different cultural context will cause obstacles to the audience, and the audience must concentrate, because each line has a subtext, and each piece of humor has a double meaning. Martin likes to carry all kinds of bootlegs, including metaphors, cultural symbols, slang, puns, awkward situations, funny scenes, etc., to create a variety of settings for the characters to enrich the drama of the characters.
Because of Martin's dramatic background, there are several places where the camera transition will have a sense of toughness, such as a theater change. Its image representation is not where it stands out. Because of the influence of Irish dramas including Joyce, Wilde, Yeats, etc., it is necessary to focus on the literary nature of the story. The imagery of the three billboards is itself a fairly classical theatrical design, with a stark metaphor of the times—the variables that a depressed society brings to the humanity of the individual. The audience's judgment of each character should not be taken away from this metaphor.
Before being "hunted down" by friends in the message area, the big background sentence was deleted, "Through the derelict date of the three billboards in 1986, it was concluded that the story occurred after the 1986 stock market crash", and now add. Although this is a story that can be used for mobile phones and Google, it still cannot escape the gloom of the 80s, which was the beginning of the hardening and intensification of the American class, the conservative government "introduced a lot of laws in the 80s", but even people spit on the crime of environmental rule of law, this town, everyone is morally dedicated to this mother, but when she expressed anger, even the priest came to stop it. It's such a small town full of good people, but it is unable to move forward with a case. When society is stubborn like a piece of cement, the meaning of anger is to break its stubbornness.
As a representative of the "face-to-face drama" in the Western theater circle, Martin Macdonald does not avoid violence and plasma itself, but chooses to use absurd methods to directly portray the dark parts of human nature such as anger, violence, prejudice, etc. With a lot of rough words in the lines, borrowing the edge of evil to portray evil, borrowing violence itself to oppose violence, and borrowing crime type anti-crime type.
The so-called "face-to-face" is to put those things that we have done in our lives, which will make us ashamed and blush in retrospect, and those things that the elite rejects using them in art, put them on the stage, and nakedly cause the audience to be ashamed and reflect.
He combines humor, absurdity, and pain with emotion, humanity, and virtue to create a black humor film that constantly reverses the whole process, makes people cry and laugh, and is full of dramatic tension and provokes the audience to think deeply.
The film stops at the right moment, just right. Is the male and female protagonists waiting for a distant question mark, or a life-and-death shopping? I don't know, it's no longer in the shadow of a billboard, and it's still unfinished. It brings with it the universality of art, and this small town exists not only in the United States, but also in any era and any corner of the world.
Martin MacDonald is no stranger to China, as his 2011 theatrical work "Pillow Man" was staged in Beijing and Shanghai, and it has conquered a large number of Chinese opera fans, including me.
Finally, I would like to say that what hit me the most was the creator's use of music, he has a good taste for music, and his bones reveal a deep sense of nostalgia. "The Last Rose of Summer" echoes the theme of the movie, and the lyrics of the lyrics are "When the loved one has passed away, who is still willing to be desolate alone in this dark world", which is also the deep tragic meaning of the heroine herself.
Playlist:
Last rose of summer, an Irish folk song, loved by musicians Beethoven and Mendelssohn;
Buckskin Stallion blues, a folk song from Townes Van Zandt;
Chiquitita, a classic masterpiece of the Swedish band Abba;
His mater's voice, a nice folk song from the talented monster of folk band;
Walk away Renee, a pop song from the African-American group Four Tops;
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, one of the roots rock representative songs.