Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Mussouri is a 2017 film as the title says is about a grieving mother’s public howler to her town’s police chief, Bill Willoughby & force.
Most of the rest of the film is a bunch of reactions to her this action. That said, this isn’t another crime thriller, or about a wailing mother who lost her daughter crying out for justice. It is about this unrelenting gritty woman (Frances McDormand) who has separated from her husband on reasons of abuse, wants to shake up the police force from their laid back routine. Three billboards puts this quiet town on prime time TV, and gets its people talking, enraged ..
As the content is serious, there are times when as an audience we’d wonder, what is that that made us laugh in certain scenes. And we do laugh out loud often, continue to laugh at the verbal and situational humour during a serious conversation.
“Did she say begets ..?” is one such point, that also encapsulates the theme of the film in one stroke!
A teenage girl is raped, burnt, and murdered in this town. Her mother is irritated that the police force in spite of a diligent officer in charge hasn’t caught the culprits responsible for her daughter’s cruel fate since 9 months. On a spur of the moment she decides to pay to paint her messages up on three billboards on a less frequently travelled road. That act makes her the target of the ire of the (almost) whole town. They, the parish priest, her ex husband, people of her town do everything — from giving her advice to hurling objects at her, her car, arresting her friend under false allegation, beating up the owner of the advertising co. who had leased the billboards, to setting the billboards on fire– but she stays determined. Along the way she finds she has new friends and well wishers for her cause.
Nevertheless, the story doesn’t end here. That’s for you to find out when you watch it. I’m tempted to share about the God narrative tool but then if I do that I’d have to add spoiler alert to this post! 😀 (some other day), but that narrative tactic speaks out loud, about every possible ending that could play in our minds about the direction of the film 😉
Verdict: I thoroughly enjoyed the film 🥰🥰 especially after a dampening Black Panther🙄. Saw these two films back to back one night, and went to sleep peacefully thereafter.
Streaming on Hotstar
collecting stories 