3 thoughts on “Movie Podcast Weekly Ep. 267: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)”

1. I’m right with you guys on Three Billboards. It’s a 9.5 for me. I agree with J that it was a little contrived, and one or two moments felt a little odd or false to me, and yet, that never inhibited my enjoyment of it. People being beautiful and horrible and cynical and hopeful and conflicted. The letters read by one character are so stirring, and there are several wonderful and surprising moments and scenes and lines throughout. The way that one violent scene is filmed is so chillimg and has a unique and interesting kind of energy and style to it.

   Speaking of Sam Rockwell’s scene where his face is obscured, I thought Tom Hardy was a lock for Best Eye Performance for his eye work in Dunkirk, but this would be a worthy contender. (Hardy still wins, though.)

   I wanted to discuss something about this, but it’s a major spoiler, so…

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   I think we’re meant to believe that the one guy who visits her and has the fight later with Dixon is still the guy, right? Someone covering for him from the Army, presumably. Or more that he is the “complicit” type… if he didn’t rape and kill her daughter, he’s still complicit by doing it to someone else or even just bragging about it. And this movie isn’t meant to be a whodunit that has a tidy resolution. That’s probably the whole point, really.

   But I’m just wanting to make sure I didn’t miss something specific, or, more likely, I’m trying to attach a resolution where there is none (again the point of the film). When we found out her ex burned the billboards, that made me think oh geez, maybe he raped and burned his daughter (the connection of someone who would burn things, and who has an obvious thing for very young women)?? But then I thought no, they would have ruled him out first, and that was just me trying to add a resolution to this story, where it was all about people trying to deal with the lack of resolution.

   Anyway, like J, I was on almost no sleep from the night before when I went to see this last night (and yet was awake and riveted throughout), and it’s a bit of a blur and swirl thinking back on it this morning, so I’d like to discuss this a bit to make sure I didn’t miss something important (like I nearly did with It Comes at Night), and am correctly interpreting that what I’m feeling about that is meant to be part of the underlying theme of the film (i.e., dealing with laxk of resolution).

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2. Eric; reading your comment has made me think a little bit and what I’ve come up with is that I’m getting better at dealing with a lack of resolution in movies. One reason may be that as you get more mature in life you are forced to deal more and more with ongoing issues that may or may not ever be resolved. A second may be that after you have watched a couple million or so movies with unrealistic and clunky resolutions that often seem to be for the sake of the resolution, you (I) start to come to the conclusion that as painful as the former may be, I would rather sit with that than be “soothed” by the latter.

   It never crossed my mind to suspect the ex-husband/father. I think he was meant to be another non-resolved sub-plotine in that we know he physically abused his first wife, and now he’s with the new woman, and we want to know; Is he a different man? Is that still going on? We worry for that young woman, and yet we are never let to know the details of that relationship.

   I originally rated Three Billboards a 10. I think that might have been half a point too high. There were too many characters that floated into the story and acted with no motivation or explanation. I liked it a lot, but as for BMOTY? I kind of hope I have a better option.

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3. I really want to see 3 Billboards but I don’t think I am going to have time to see it before the end of the year. ☹

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