A sobering second look

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a movie of the moment. Writer/director Martin McDonagh boasted as much back in November when he was interviewed by the L.A. Times: “Putting out a film right now with a strong, smart, determined and outraged woman character in the lead role – that feels right to me.”

McDonagh’s film tells the story of Mildred Hayes, a bereaved mother played by Frances McDormand, who erects billboards near her hometown in an attempt to hold the police accountable for the unsolved rape and murder of her daughter. As women continue to express outrage in the months following the Harvey Weinstein allegations, the link between this work of fiction and the sad reality of the world we live in is obvious.

And it seems that moviegoers have been congratulating themselves for recognizing this association since the film first came out. When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Three Billboards received a 10-minute standing ovation. Days later, it won the prestigious People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Then, at the Golden Globe Awards in January, Barbra Streisand shrieked with delight when she announced the film had won for best drama. Most recently, it received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.

Three Billboards may be marketed as a tragic-comic movie about maternal rage, but it’s also a problematic, faux progressive mess. It’s the sort of insidious art that masquerades as feminist and antiracist. Upon closer inspection, however, it can be seen as a movie more concerned with humanizing white supremacists than advancing any worthwhile virtue.

The #MeToo hashtag that called upon women to share their experiences of assault and harassment on social media gave way to the more militant Time’s Up campaign. Founded on New Year’s Day by powerful Hollywood liberals such as Shonda Rhimes, Reese Witherspoon and Selma Hayek, Time’s Up is working to strengthen workplace harassment and discrimination laws. And so, when Hayek introduced Three Billboards at this year’s Globes, she joyfully referenced Time’s Up, characterizing Mildred as a fictional heroine for the movement.

Certainly, the movie deals with violence against women, but the reception to the film has confused simply addressing this type of subject for making a powerful progressive statement on it. In reality, Three Billboards doesn’t champion equality or condemn abuse as much as it twists itself into knots trying to turn a violent, racist cop from antagonist to protagonist.

Dixon, the Ebbing police officer played by Sam Rockwell, abuses his power in the form of racially motivated torture. In one of the most violent scenes of recent cinema, the audience is shown Dixon brutalizing – in an extremely bloody and disturbing manner – an innocent person on screen. Despite the harrowing images of torture, Dixon is then sent on an unearned redemption arc.

Shortly after receiving an inexplicable vote of confidence from the town’s beloved police chief (played by Woody