SECOND SCREEN

Now here’s a funny thing… or possibly not. Let me try to explain. The Golden Globes are the only major awards to make a distinction between drama and ‘musical or comedy’, and Martin McDonagh’s new film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (15A) ★★★★, duly walked away with four of the coveted awards, including Best Motion Picture. All in the drama category.

Which is consistent but odd, for at the screening I attended people were laughing from beginning to end, albeit in a slightly uncomfortable way.

For my money it’s a comedy, but of the blacker-than-black variety, which is exactly what you expect from writerdirector McDonagh, who has already brought us the wickedly funny In Bruges.

Three Billboards isn’t that funny, but it is clearly intended to make us laugh, as the larger-than-life performances from the likes of Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell make clear.

The reason why it might be punching above its weight at the moment is the emotive subject matter. At a time when Hollywood couldn’t be more sensitive about the sexual abuse meted out by powerful men, this is a film about the very worst sexual violence against women, with McDormand playing a grieving and furiously angry mother still mourning her daughter, who was raped and mur-Hollywood dered by an unknown attacker. When the local police seem incapable of tracking down her daughter’s killer, Mildred (McDormand) rents three derelict advertising hoardings on the edge of her home town and covers them in posters taunting the police – and specifically Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) – for their failure. ‘Still no arrests?’ asks one of the billboards.

I thought this was when people would stop laughing but it wasn’t. After a suitable pause, it soon returned.

McDormand, who won the Golden Globe for Best Actress and must be favourite again at the Oscars, is excellent in a strong role perfect for these difficult times – the boiler-suited Mildred, the very antithesis of glamour, is not a woman to take any nonsense from any man.

Rockwell, who won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a dim cop on a short and normally racist fuse, is funny but couldn’t be accused of underplaying, while Harrelson, as the police chief who unexpectedly turns out to be hiding not just a conscience but a tragic secret too, is quietly excellent. The dénouement of his particular storyline is too dark even for me.

McDonagh’s film is extremely well executed but it’s also long, tangled and any higher purpose is difficult to discern. Sometimes, however, just saying the right things at the right time is enough.