Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
I have noticed a long-held belief not at all limited to non-Americans that the best way to depict the US is through grotesque exaggeration of everything and adding a few bits of weirdness for us to shrug at and say “Random! But then that’s America for you!” Three Billboards is like that: stuffed with characters that exist through sheer accumulation of eccentric details. It veers across endless shifts in tone, not so much tragi-comedy as channel-surf: something guaranteed to earn the hushed respect of Hollywood screenwriters who go around muttering “tone” like an incantation and regard “playing with tone” as a level of art which Dostoyevsky could only yearn for. So we get just enough farce and stylised caricature to get us out of realism but then quick swerves into a portentous burlesque of serious drama to imply depth and weight. For a literary comparison, consider Martin Amis at his laziest. A plot summary shows the film is simultaneously simplistic and over-loaded. A constantl...