March 3, 2018  

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

      1. I went to the Clapham Picture House to see Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It is billed as a “black comedy”, which I suppose is fair as there are many funny lines but it is so searingly black, so piercingly bitter, so tough that it is difficult for me to think of it as a comedy in any sense at all. The film uses the landscape of backwoods rural America to frame a story of brutality and violence presided over by a good ‘ol boy style of sheriff. It is coolly directed by an Englishman, Martin McDonagh, and brilliantly acted particularly by the lead, Frances McDormand.
      2. McDormand plays an embittered mother of a murder and rape victim out to reap vengeance upon the supine, corrupt, unaccountable police and, if she can find him, her daughter’s killer. It is painfully honest and depressing for the hopes of a liberal America BUT in the last reel she finds an ally in one of the cops and as several of the players start showing moral growth, we are left with a parting question mark. Is vengeance sufficient? Is it perhaps even worse than the original crime?
      3. I thought it was a brilliant film but there is another view. One which says that this is a metropolitan view of hill-billy country and that the moral growth is all too convenient and the apparent evil all too neatly framed for credibility. Go and see it and let me know your views.

About Tony Belton

Labour Councillor for Latchmere Ward 1972-2022, now Battersea Park Ward, London Borough of Wandsworth Ever hopeful Spurs supporter; Lane visit to the Lane, 1948 Olympics. Why don't they simply call the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, The Lane? Once understood IT but no longer

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