8/31/2023 0 Comments Fragments movie connorHis expression contains that mixture of fear and embarrassment as he fumbles an apology assuring her that he didn’t mean to do it. People we are ready to love disappoint and confuse us.įor example, during a heated interrogation, the police chief Willoughby, who is dying of cancer, accidentally spits blood in Mildred’s face. People we are ready to hate elude our certainty. ![]() Perhaps what is most disconcerting is how quickly the director disrupts our feelings toward a character and the dynamics between characters in a fraction of a second. Each character displays capacity for both unspeakable violence and gestures of goodness. evil, the director transforms these figures into something more complex: human beings. ![]() But rather than create a simple trope of good vs. ![]() Three Billboards displays a cast of characters that are riddled with sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and ignorance. “I t does indeed matter what we do to one another.” It matters for the humanity of ourselves. It matters for the humanity of the other. Having waded through gestures of the polarities of humanization and brutal dehumanization, it does indeed matter what we do to one another. Perhaps the thesis question of the film is uttered by Mildred in a moment of reflection, “So is that it? There is no God, the world is empty, and it doesn’t matter what we do to one another?” Director Martin McDonaugh’s film leaves us with a subsequent answer. It persists in symptoms that live on in communities, in the layers of past violence that constitute present ways of relating.” Mildred wields her testament to the way trauma does not simply go away and constitutes present ways of relating. It persists in symptoms that live on in the body, in the intrusive fragments of memories that return. As theologian Shelly Rambo argues in her book Spirit and Trauma, “Trauma is what does not go away. Mildred’s billboards symbolize the voice that names trauma and keeps the community’s attention on the visible and invisible marks of violence. The film itself rages against grasps for power through violence including the battering and rape of women, police brutality against black bodies, ugly narratives of white supremacy, and the insufficiency of justice in the face of these compounded traumas that fillet our vulnerabilities wide open. It is rage made of a betrayal of trust to protect what is most loved and valued. Mildred provides an important powerhouse embodiment of female anger that rages on behalf of all of us against the systemic sexualized violence that pervades the world. Anger becomes a form of compassionate care that draws a boundary and says, “No!” At other times it turns to violence as a response to powerlessness and vulnerability. At other times its characters’ indignation at the changing world is as foul as their ideology. At times its characters wield it with holy righteousness. Three Billboards is a brilliant cinematic meditation on anger. In putting up three billboards detailing the murder and singling out the police chief Willoughby, Mildred asks why no arrests have been made and incites the polar responses of empathy and disgust from the community. They each embody the question, who do you hold accountable when the whole world is on fire? At the center of the dark comedy is Mildred Hayes, played by Frances McDormand, the mother of a young woman whose brutal rape and murder has gone unsolved. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a hauntingly brutal tale depicting a web of characters who rage as they figure out how to live in the ambiguous landscape where justice eludes them and violence is anything but redemptive. Īs Oscar season is upon us, one nominee has stuck with me like the pang of bruised ribs. Warning: plot spoilers ahead for Three Billboards. Brittany explores how Three Billboards, like Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find, challenges our conceptions of anger, violence, and the polarities of humanity embodied in each of us-raising vital and difficult questions about how we relate and react to one another. ![]() The 2018 Academy Awards are coming up this Sunday, and here, Brittany Deininger writes about one of the Best Picture nominees, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
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