Okay, so something unexpected happened. I was invited to see a film, at the Plymouth Arts Centre. The film was the multi-award winning film from Fox Searchlight Pictures and Film4, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, starring Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell.
It's described on the Plymouth Arts Centre website as a "pitch-black comedic drama" and to be fair, that's not an overstatement. The moments of comedy were very black, and in some cases, cringingly so. Some of the dialogue sounded like it had been written by Fox News fanboys, and was a Republican's fantasy about how policing should be, but it had that sense of being real. Real people in real situations and real places with real reactions.
The crazy thing about that though, is there is no place in Missouri called Ebbing, and not a single frame of the film was actually shot in Missouri. In fact, the town that was the main location for the filming, is actually a small mountain town in western North Carolina, called Sylva. A few other locations around North Carolina were used for various scenes, such as the Hospital, and the Gift Shop. Weird, isn't it? Well no, Vancouver for instance has often substituted for many an American city on TV and in movies. In the 80s TV series Dynasty, most of the show was shot in California. Only a few establishing shots made it actually look like they were in Denver.
This film had all the elements that can make great movies for me. First, the characters. Mildred was the main "protagonist" in the film. I put that in quotes, because although she is the leading character, she definitely doesn't fit your standard idea of a protagonist, which is usually on the more heroic side of the spectrum. But in a way, the very dirty grey nature, not just of her character, but indeed, most of the characters in this film, is what gives this film the blackness of its comedy. This is not a morality play, there are no good guys and bad guys here. Everyone's morality is at least somewhat questionable. The morality of the main characters is extremely questionable.
But each character's motivations were genuine, and heartfelt, and often full of good intentions, but as the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The second thing that was well done was the storyline. Everything about that story from the beginning was well written. From Mildred discovering those abandoned billboards at the beginning of the movie, all the way through to the end, the story was beautifully crafted, except that we never get the resolution we are looking for. We never find out the guilty party in this, the person who raped and killed her daughter, Angela. And that is the biggest black mark against this film. As beautifully crafted as the story is, the lack of resolution at the end, feels like a major mis-step. It's almost as though Writer and Director Martin McDonagh just runs out of story to tell, and has no way to finish it satisfactorily. So, to his credit, he just decides not to rather than create something that would be contrived or feel fake or phony. But still, I dislike the lack of adequate resolution. We make absolutely no progress in the case between the start of the film, and the finish, and that felt wrong.
The third thing that was well done, was the pacing. Too often a film will be too quick or too slow. Major developments are usually not given enough time to sink in, or minor developments will be dealt with for far too long. Here, that's not the case. Everything is given the perfect amount of time to breathe before moving on. Major moments are given the time to sink in. Minor moments get their moment in the sun, before moving on. In many ways, pacing relates to the story, but you can still have a wonderfully crafted story, but have the pacing off in some way. Here, the story is well crafted, and the pacing is just right.
The last thing I want to talk about is what I tend to refer to as the technicalities, though they are not mere technicalities. Things like the stunt work, the cinematography, the music, the editing etc. The music was excellent, I'd not heard of Carter Burwell, before this, but I can understand why he was nominated 5 times during this past award season, including at the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and at the British Independent Film Awards, where he won the Best Music category. The editing was pretty damn near perfect too, and again, unsurprising that Editor Jon Gregory recieved 6 nominations in this award season, including at the Oscars, the BAFTAs, and the British Independent Film Awards, where he also won for Best Editing.
So, what let it down for me? Well, I've already talked about the lack of resolution to the story, which I felt was a big mistake. But more than that, was the reliance on just having a gritty tone to the piece, which is something I feel that our film industry is very good at, but also tends to over-rely upon. I like my stories to have some degree of reality but also some degree of fantasy, and for me, this was too real, it was too gritty, the dark humour, whilst not overdone, could have really done with just one or two touches of more light hearted humour, just so it wouldn't feel so intensely gritty.
The other thing that let this down for me, is the appearances of some characters in the film, who are there for one or two scenes, and really serve no purpose other than to have a few lines in those scenes. Father Montgomery appears in one small sequence of the film relatively early on, and he's not seen again afterwards. This other character, who introduces himself by smashing a $7 pottery rabbit trinket, has no name, and his only purpose is to be a complete red herring, but we don't see him first until about an hour in, and we only find out he's a complete red herring, near the end of the film, in the last few minutes. He was introduced too late in the film, and really, for all the beautiful story crafting, maybe it was a case of telling too much of the story at certain points, rather than crafting a good ending that would have been satisfactory.
On IMDB currently, the movie gets an 8.3/10. On Rotten Tomatoes, the Tomato Meter is at 92% whilst the Audience Score is 87%. For me, the great character work, storyline and pacing, were somewhat but not completely undone, by the lack of satisfactory resolution, the over-reliance on grittiness, and a few characters who really had little business being in this film. I can only give this a 6 out of 10 score at best. It was good, but not that good. The lack of resolution cost this film 2.5 points. The over-reliance on grittiness cost it half a point, and the characters who didn't belong in the film, lost it one whole point. As a 15 rated film, it did have moments that I couldn't watch, but thankfully, it had more moments that were compelling and actually funny too. But overall for me, it's not a bad film, but it lacked too much of substance to be a great film.
