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Friday, April 26, 2024
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HOLLYWOOD THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI
EDITOR'S PICK
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' is a stunner (Review By
Subhash K Jha ; Rating ****1/2)
The impressive slew of Golden Globe awards that this astounding film has won
should surprise no one. "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" is the kind
of genre-defining cinema that creates a benchmark for many years to come.
Right at the outset it would be prudent to mention that Francis McDormand, in
her Golden Globe winning performance, as a raging seething mother seeking
justice for her raped and murdered daughter, brings to the film's fine script a
kind of dignity-in-devastation I've never seen in a vengeful mother before(and
we've seen everyone from Sridevi to Raveena Tandon in a similar situation).
McDormand plays Mildred Hayes as a mother whose tears have dried up leaving in
their wake a bitterness and frustration that make her a ‘bitch' and worse (her
son calls her a ‘cu.t') to all who are unfortunate enough to come in her range
of venom.
Mildred is beyond caring about the niceties of a civil society. And just how
‘civil' is this society where a young girl's brutal annihilation goes
unpunished? Not that Mildred doesn't care.
Her shock when the police officer whom she has taken to task for tardy
investigation by putting up billboards demanding results, coughs up cancerous
blood , is so vividly etched on her face. That one sequence tells us how much
grief this mother hides in her angry attitude.
This is a film where we are expected to constantly keep searching for signs of
emotions in characters that are not prone to being emotionally demonstrative.
That the police officer whom Mildred pulls up is played Woody Harrelson is one
more magnificent sleight of providence that aids this masterly exploration and
tragedy and grief , to acquire greatness. Harrelson plays a dying cop , and very
soon he's dead. My most favourite sequence follows after Harrelson's sudden
death when his beautiful wife Anne(played by Abbie Cornish) drops by at
Mildred's workplace with a letter left behind by her husband.
After delivering the letter the grieving widow mumbles,"I really don't know what
I am going to do for the rest of the day.I've no idea what a woman whose husband
has shot himself is supposed to do."
The slicing irony and devastating sarcasm run across the lines spoken by the
characters imbuing on them(the characters) a sense of raw unvarnished hurt. It's
not only about Mildred and her hurt about what happened to her daughter. What
about Mildred's son (played with lingering melancholy by Lucas Hedges).
Sandwiched between his mother's raging grief and his dead sister unvanquished
spirit, Mildred's son is at a loss for words.He remains quiet while his mother
rages on.
Speaking of mothers, there is another fascinating portrait of matriarchy, a
brutish cop's mother who fans and fuels her son's violent tendencies. It's a
chilling portrayal of paternal perversity that makes us wonder if the cop-son
has turned out the way he has because of the kind of mother that he has.
Every character is splendidly etched into a script that stretches and sprawls
without losing its arching grace. Every actor shines in the smallest of roles.
Look out for Samara Weaving as Mildred's ex-husband's new squeeze. She is
outwardly a sexy bimbo. But the goodness of her heart spares her from becoming
the brunt of ridicule.
Miraculously the plot about a sordid crime and its embittering aftermath,
succeeds in finding the centre of humanism in almost every character, most of
all the assistant cop, a racial bigoted sadistic pig of a man who lives with his
possessive mother and proudly misuses his badge to bully citizens. His change of
heart is a little hard to swallow . But what the hell! Shit happens in real
life.
Sam Rockwell, who won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor, plays the
sadistic cop turned softie, with grit and grandiosity.
Swinging effortlessly from viciousness to compassion Three Billboards...is a
rare exceptional film that yokes cruelty and compassion in an uneasy embrace
that never gets into the zone of the implausible. The plot is held together by
McDormand's majestic portrayal. But there is a lot more to this parable of
violence and justice than meets the eye.
Deftly written and directed with a keen understanding of the clannish
conspiracies that tie the people of small towns together, this film offers us a
deep and penetrating view into the innermost enclaves of the human heart where
unknown to us, the most unexpected secretion of humanism merges with the
cruelest of blows dealt by destiny.
If only on that afternoon Mildred had not let her daughter walk to her party on
that lonely stretch of highway.
"I hope I get raped," the daughter had spitefully stomped off.
The director has spoken of how the film was inspired by billboards that he saw
along the road once while travelling.
What if he had not travelled on that road?
Actress Jennifer Lawrence was seen hitching up her sequinned dress to climb over rows of chairs to get to her seat at the 90th Academy Awards here -- and that too with a wine glass in hand.Lawrence, 27, dazzled in a platinum sequin Dior gown and strappy heels. She did not fall.She hiked up her dress and raised a leg over a chair at the Dolby Theatre, holding her floor-length gown in one hand and a full wine glass in another, reports foxnews.comRead More
Oldman, McDormand win best actors at 90th OscarsGary Oldman, for essaying former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour", and Frances McDormand for her role as a grieving mother in "Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri", won the best actor and best actress in a leading role categories at the 90th Academy Awards here.Read More
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comedic drama from Academy Award® winner Martin McDonagh (IN BRUGES). After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter’s murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award® winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, commissioning three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award® nominee Woody Harrelson), the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother’s boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.
