The flicks
It pains to advertise in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI and it’s cometh the hour, , cometh the man with a plan in DARKEST HOUR
THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (MA15+) Director: Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) Starring: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Peter Dinklage. Rating:
FUNNY, sad, wildly unpredictable and shrewdly insightful, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a movie that defiantly marches to the beat of its own drum.
Nevertheless, the performances are so emphatically strong - and the writing is so searingly sublime - that you will fall into line with its unusual rhythm without even realising it.
Mildred Hayes (an incredible Frances McDormand, definitely front of the line for the next Best Actress Oscar after this) wears the same uniform every day: a navy-blue jumpsuit, not unlike that you would see sported by a mechanic, or an assembly-line worker in a car factory.
This outfit isn’t a pre-requisite of Mildred’s employment by a gift shop in the small American country town of Ebbing.
The attire has more to do with the one thing that is on Mildred’s mind before, during and after her working hours.
Seven months ago, Mildred’s daughter Angela was raped and murdered, and her case remains unsolved. In fact, the Ebbing police don’t have as much as a single lead, or a vague outline of a potential suspect.
The tight-knit community around Mildred has already moved on with their lives. Mildred’s austere fashion choice is her way of reminding everyone - herself included - that she won’t be moving on. Not until her child’s killer is brought to justice.
However, this is no ordinary tale of revenge, or even redemption. You will gather as much
DARKEST HOUR (PG) Director: Joe Wright (Atonement) Starring: Gary Oldman, Ben Mendelsohn, Lily James, Kristin Scott Thomas, Stephen Dillane. Rating:
MUCH has already been made of the magnificence of Gary Oldman’s portrayal of iconic British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour.
In years to come (particularly if, as expected, Oldman wins the coming Best Actor Oscar), it will be the deeply transformative nature of this performance for which the film will be remembered.
However, if we were to take a step back from all that justifiable hype, most will immediately recognise Darkest Hour as a direct companion piece to the recent WWII masterpiece Dunkirk.
Indeed, these are the very same events, processed from a radically different (and noticeably less compelling) perspective.
This time, the day will be saved for those many thousands of troops stranded on a windswept French beach by one man waddling down the corridors of power in London.
With a little unforeseen luck and a lot of intestinal fortitude, Winston Churchill became the crucial keeper of a flame of resistance that would ultimately keep an all-too-possible Nazi invasion of Great Britain at bay. once Mildred arrives at an idea she believes will draw some new heat to Angela’s cold case.
Using all of her savings, Mildred pays for a trio of billboards to appear on a back road leading into Ebbing.
The wording of each oversized advertisement is basic to the point of bluntness.
Everyone who sees it can’t help but get the point.
Angela Hayes died a horrible, terrifying and pointless death.
Cinematically speaking, Darkest Hour is no Dunkirk. It is as old-fashioned (sepia-toned cinematography, sweeping orchestral score, etc) and conventionally structured as these kind of prestige historical biopics can be.
Thank heavens, then, for the amazing work of Oldman. Though the use of prosthetics and padding has easily placed the actor in the same roly-poly physical spectrum as Churchill, it is his channelling of the spirit of the man that achieves the greatest impact here.
During the period depicted in Darkest Hour, Churchill was yet to become the indefatigable elder statesman now fixed in so many people’s memories.
As a relatively unpopular choice of PM and with a lot of blemishes on his track record, Churchill had a lot to prove in one of the most trying times in his nation’s history.
Oldman seizes upon his character’s many flaws and magically turns them into saving graces: Churchill’s rapid swings between selfconfidence and self-doubt, his unbridled love of his own voice, his willingness to send himself up, and his stubborn refusal to yield any ground.
It is such a dazzling star turn from the lead actor that the well-pitched performances of his supporting cast — including Kristin Scott Thomas as Churchill’s wife Clementine, and a wonderful Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI — are almost unfairly shoved into the shadows.
The police have botched the investigation. The local police chief is to blame.
Mildred actually names Ebbing Police Chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) on the last billboard in the sequence.
Renowned as a fair and honourable man, he isn’t very thrilled with such a public shaming.
Neither is Bill’s second-in-command, Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell).
This guy’s a redneck, a racist, and an allround jerk.
What follows in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a tragi-comic character study in triplicate, as Mildred, Bill and Jason each deal with the prolonged aftermath of Angela’s death in their own uniquely hard-tofathom way.
No-one in the movie is particularly likeable or blessed with many redeeming features. However, you will have to search long and hard to find a collection of characters more utterly, truly human than these.