【A Thought of Ecstasy】

During a screening of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,A Thought of Ecstasy Missouriat the Toronto International Film Festival this week, the public audience broke out into applause after Frances McDormand finished a blistering speech about culpability.

And why were viewers were moved to show rare mid-showing affection? If one had to guess, it was in part the power of McDormand's perfectly composed delivery, a masterful handling of tone and ferocity, and in part the nature of the monologue from writer-director Martin McDonagh.

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The twists and turns of the dialogue exemplifies what this movie has to offer, a towering use of language that never goes in the direction you're expecting.

McDonagh, best know for In Brugesas well has his lauded plays, has made a fascinating dark comedy and/or drama, and McDormand is on hand with a performance that's a mournful and hilarious study of a woman stricken with remorse and rage.

McDormand is Mildred Hayes, who will enter the pantheon of great female roles like her Fargocop Marge Gunderson. Months after the rape and murder of her daughter Angela, Mildred is outraged by the lack of movement in the case, so she decides to shock her community into paying attention. She pays to put up messages on three abandoned billboards hovering above a largely untraveled road. They read, respectively: "Raped While Dying," "And Still No Arrests," "How Come Chief Willoughby?"

Her textual assault on the police head (Woody Harrelson), a respected family man, sends the department's boys club into a frenzy, with no one more outraged than Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an erratic, racist buffoon. The impact of the billboards ripple through the community, and soon enough the angry words yield bloodshed.

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Unrestrained violence is a hallmark McDonagh's work—he has even coated stages in the red stuff—and he has not ditched it here. Ebbing's transformation into a place of brutality is extreme, but never feels unearned. After all, Angela's death signals that this is a town where the absolute worst can happen.

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McDonagh paints twin portraits of Mildred and Jason, two people in opposition who are ruled by their ids and deep-seated desires to set their opposition aflame—literally or metaphorically.

McDormand makes it clear that Mildred approaches her war with a perverse sense of glee, and little regard for those who disagree with her methods. Her son (Manchester By The Sea's Lucas Hedges) just wants his mom to stop, but she doesn't really give a shit that her fight is also a source of trauma for him. That’s perhaps because she is so reticent to acknowledge her own sorrow. When that does peek through, McDormand allows Mildred's guard to slip just a little, but still portrays her as someone decidedly no-bullshit.

Rockwell, on the other hand, begins in a familiar dopey mode, and manages to oscillate from laughable to terrifying, finally landing somewhere else that I hesitate to reveal.

Bizarrely, there’s a skewed optimism that coexists with the harshness of Three Billboards.

There are no twists per se in Three Billboards, but McDonagh is constantly peeling back the layers of these people. Just when you think you know what is driving them, he drops in a detail that alters your perspective and toys with your loyalties. These are probably the most complicated, compelling characters you will see on screen all year.

Elsewhere down the call sheet, roles are also intriguing: Harrelson’s Willoughby is not the villain the billboards’ central question might imply; Peter Dinklage and Caleb Landry Jones play their respective roles with sensitivity.

Bizarrely, there’s a skewed optimism that coexists with the harshness of Three Billboards. McDonagh’s writing is bitingly profane and his camera isn’t afraid to show maimed flesh. But there’s also a sense that even when monstrosity seems to be all-powerful, decency maybe lurking. Of course, this is not to say that anything saccharine overwhelms its delicious bitterness.

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