"Violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace."
- Flannery O'Connor
Introduction
At the beginning of the movie, Mildred Hayes, played by McDormand, walked into the billboard rental office opposite the town police station. The young man inside was reading a book leisurely. At this time, the camera specially gave the cover of the book, "A Good Man" Is Hard to Find" ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find"). We were taken into Ebbing, a small town where "good people are hard to find".
The Southern American female writer Flannery O’Connor is the original author of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". The absurdity and violence in her work and the black humor in the movie have the same effect, but in my opinion, the two authors The attitude towards violence is the key to unlocking this "Three Billboards".
In addition to O'Connor, McDomond and Missouri are the other two titles in my eyes. Understanding the characterization and location settings in MacDonald’s films and trying to figure out the “text background” behind the screen is what I am more interested in after watching "Three Billboards".
1. McDonald's description of McDomond
A frequent guest in the Cohen Brothers movies and Joel Cohen’s married wife, McDomond is one of the very few actresses in today's film industry who can play the role of Mildred Hayes. Although twenty years old, like the female police officer Marge in the "Fargo" after the Oscars, McDormand performed wonderfully as always. She showed Mildred's capable, courageous, and unrelenting face, while also very restrained and delicately presented to the audience the sensitivity of the single mother behind the violence. " I know you didn't baby. " ——During the fierce confrontation in the interrogation room, the seriously ill old police chief suddenly coughed up blood in the place of anger and faced an apology ("I didn't mean it" ) Mildred's subconscious reaction and answer portrayed the other side of the character's "softness".
Such "two-sided" character depiction is quite uniform in "Three Billboards". In a limited amount of pen and ink, MacDonald tried to package each protagonist into a "drama" image that can be experienced and observed from multiple angles. They may not be complete and full, or even real enough, but they are quite vivid in the "dramatic space". Throughout the film, the director does not try to let us "infiltrate" all aspects of their lives (that is, to infect people with "real"), but to explain each person's history through specially arranged plots, dialogues, and even objects. And story. The old sheriff with a mouthful of f**k and his letters and his wife and daughter, the reckless adjutant Dixon and his old mother, the unsmiling "billboard woman" and the swing behind her house... McDonald almost In every scene, we try our best to show us a certain "face" of the characters, and this is why it is difficult for us to judge them in one sentence of good or bad in the end.
It is true that McDonald’s characters are more like “characters in the script” rather than prototypes in life. “Black humor” doesn’t need to be too close to life, but unlike the Cohen brothers, who are often more absurd and out of control, The whole film of "Three Billboards" is always stable in a "controllable" plot development and emotional space. Although we know from the beginning to the end that this is a fictional story just like when we watched the Cohen brothers, under the solid script framework, based on the mercy of the characters, the interspersed humor and the connection of music, McDonald created for us An aesthetic vision completely different from the latter. Therefore, I would rather compare it with last year's "Manchester by the Sea": Although Lee Chandler described by Kenny Rongan is "more down-to-earth", he is also a playwright who pays attention to the emotions of the characters, deals with them, and In my opinion, the control of the balance of the entire script is also what MacDonald is trying to achieve.
It is worth pointing out that the three characters in "Three Billboards" are "very abiding by the rules". In the end, no one was overwhelmed by the feast of this performance. Especially the emotional restraint, McDomond, who is acting with his eyes and facial muscles, supports the emotions and psychology of the characters in the script outside of the lines and dialogues. The script with outstanding lines is afraid of the characters "worn out", and the characters who perform well are afraid of the "core" of the story being rough and hollow. "Three Billboards" did not fall into these two "traps", and McDormand is really the best of MacDonald. Good helper.
2. Missouri without Ebbing
Ebbing is a place name that does not exist, and Missouri is not the actual filming location of this film (the film was completely shot in another small town in North Carolina, Sylva), it is just an imaginary place where this non-existent story takes place. Why must it be Missouri?
Perhaps it is because the sensational Ferguson shooting occurred three years ago in Missouri (the black boy Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer Darren Wilson without a weapon, and the marginal impact of the trial of the case spread. The whole country, and this is also the beginning of a series of police violent law enforcement and racial discrimination disputes). Combined with the film's story setting, Mildred's aggressive accountability of Chief Willoughby, and the arrangement of the character Dixon, on the surface, the "political smoke" of the film is not uncommon.
But this is not necessarily the case. Throughout the story, it is not difficult to find that the director did not intend to package the film as a "how politically correct" film. Here are the factors of his interpretation and attitude of "violence" (detailed below), and his views Ebbing's positioning in the script is related. Looking back, the police violence and religious scandals mentioned in some of the conversations were not the focus of the film's intense discussion, and Missouri and Ebbing may simply be a stage setting for MacDonald to tell stories. Compared with the inherently tangled social injustice and ethnic entanglement, the film's perspective is more "pure" because it is more about the three-dimensionality of human nature and the contradiction behind the "psychology of revenge", rather than the imperfection of the society from top to bottom. MacDonald is more willing to start from the microcosm, starting from the values of "humanism" rather than the absolute sense, to tell the story behind the "billboard". Taking off the "big hat" of social focus, using the weaving of the script instead of the intertextuality with reality to disassemble for us how the anger and hatred between people transformed into the crisis and disaster of the whole village, it is my opinion Missouri and Ebbing's understanding of the second topic.
"Three Billboards" is not a realist work, and the ambiguous connection between Ebbing and Ferguson County should not be a reason to discuss its social significance too much. The fictional Ebbing is like thousands of other towns like Manchester-by-the-Sea: there are waves and calm waves, there are raging fires and green mountains. All kinds of people are there to face their own destiny, and perseverely find the best way to fight and compromise.
3. O'Connor, violence, and the "moment of grace"
Back to O'Connor. The most interesting thing in "Three Billboards" is the director's attitude towards violence. McDormand, Missouri, these two words that seem to be very close to violence are actually not enough to hold up the "core" of the entire script. Following O’Connor’s clue, we further discovered the focus of MacDonald’s discussion-although the "smashing, looting, and burning" on the screen can be true or false, he still made a clear-cut approach to the positive meaning of violence in the film. For sure.
As the opening quote said, "Violence has a strange effect, it can make my characters face reality again." I think this is exactly what MacDonald wants to convey through the character of Mildred Hayes. It is precisely because of this "strange effect" that McDomond and Missouri in a "violent context" have another possibility to be interpreted. The violence in the Coen Brothers film is endless helplessness, it is the death and death that ultimately leads to the end, it is the indifferent eyes of Javier Baden in "Old Nowhere", and these are not conveyed by "Three Billboards" information. At the end of the film, the two most inconsistent characters in the whole film-Mildred and Dixon-carried guns and slowly stopped on the road of "revenge". They began to be uncertain whether they still need to move forward, because The people who should be reconciled the most are actually sitting next to each other.
If we say that the movie portrayed Mildred compromise between revenge and back and forth is a true portrayal of everyone in the face of such a situation reaction, then from the point of view screenwriter, McDonald borrow on the surface of " the Anger begets More the Anger" This is a It is the most subjective and bold point in his conception process to explain the necessity of resistance and violence from the side. "Three Billboards" embraces the philosophy of "using violence against violence" to the greatest extent. It seems to imply that anger is often a prerequisite for reconciliation, and sometimes it is the only way to reconciliation-a series of tragedies in the film Although cruel, looking back, without these incidents, the scene where Mildred and Dixon finally sat together was almost impossible. In the face of the more determined and cold "worldview" of the Coen brothers, I don't know whether this interpretation is warm, but at least McDonald wants to express one point. If this world that cannot avoid violence has an end, then it must not be " The helplessness and sadness in "Old Nowhere".
O'Connor also said in the same sentence, "The reason why violence can make my characters face reality again is because it is violence that prepares them to accept the arrival of the Moment of Grace." Moment of Grace is a religion. The above concept can be understood as the moment when the "Holy Spirit appears" in everyone's life. At this moment, all past anger, hatred, and "difficulties" with oneself and others will be "turned over". The spiritual epiphany will bring the personal destiny back to the "right track." In "Three Billboards", it is not difficult to find which node is Moment of Grace, but more importantly, in the framework of the whole drama, we see that anger and violence themselves finally reach a compromise and reconciliation. The necessary role played in the process.
Concluding remarks
"Three Billboards" is an exquisitely conceived movie. This exquisiteness is not only embodied in the outline and description of the characters "the rough but the fine", and the control of the overall rhythm of the film, but also embodied in Martin Macdonald's film The "text space" behind the sound and picture is quite closely constructed. These are inseparable from his own rich experience in drama. From this perspective, the film's overall narrative in the style of "stage play", the prominence of people, and the deliberately weakening of the analysis of the macro social reality, all end up serving the author's rational perspective and intention to view the positive side of violence. Don't overinterpret the series of atrocities presented in the film, they are just "chess pieces" used to tell stories in this fictional "text space".
Yes, Violence IS strangely and Mildred Dixon Capable of returning to the Accept Reality and the Preparing Them to Their Moment of Grace. In admit that this is a premise like "Dogville" as "pure fiction" works by Flannery O'Connor For reference, Na’s views expressed in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", listening to "The Last Rose of Summer", we will find that "Three Billboards" is a very wonderful story.
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