3 January 2018: Three
Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is a superbly acted film. I am glad
that I saw it and I think I would even recommend it to people. But I found it infuriating. Dixon, played by Sam
Rockwell, is a monstrous character whose “redemption arc” is simply unearned.
His rehabilitation perhaps even sends a dangerous message. Maybe calling it a “redemption” or “rehabilitation”
is an overstatement/misrepresentation of Martin McDonagh’s (the writer/director)
intention/purpose. But it is, I think, indisputable that McDonagh’s film asks
us to equate his character’s actions and rage to Mildred’s and that is, to me,
just a false equivalence. And I can’t even get started on the film’s treatment
of policing and race. By the film’s end, my jaw was tight with tension. Ugh.
I do wonder how my experience would have been different if I
hadn’t just finished The Sunflower and
didn’t have questions of forgiveness and redemption on my mind…
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