Monday, December 17, 2018, 7:15 PM – Movie: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Martin McDonagh’s fiercely written, pleasurable tragicomedy stars Frances McDormand as Mildred, the mother of a teenage girl who was raped and murdered. After quite some time has passed, no arrests have been made.
The drama happens in a town named Ebbing, Missouri, a remote and fictional community in the southern United States. Frustrated with the lack of any progress in tracking down her daughter’s killer, Mildred rents three unused billboards just outside of town, demanding to know why the town’s police chief has achieved precisely nothing. The three billboards are cathartic monuments to her rage and grief; they attract the attention of local TV and astonish and infuriate the town authorities in ways she clearly intends and welcomes. Police Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) coolly declines to be provoked, having troubles of his own, but his incompetent, jeeringly racist deputy Dixon takes a very different view. The three billboards are a catalyst, creating and accelerating crises that are only indirectly connected to Mildred’s own tragedy.