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26 January
This is a response to Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Wes Anderson simply directs us in such a way that he has no need to show us the territory of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) on a map for us to know that it is representational, rather than actual - whereas, in a film that is not without other relevance, it is unhelpfully obvious to any attempt to read The Dressmaker (2015) literally that what is shown has scant sense of being a real place* [though this, for some clear reasons, is also not Dogville (2003)].
If you thought that it was unlikely that a police department would have a badge in the shape of the state of Missouri, that is not the most implausible and / or unreal aspect of @3Billboards... pic.twitter.com/lqKUxN13HY— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 28, 2018
However, one believes that there are better grounds for abandoning any pretence that Kate Winslet (Tilly Dunnage), returning to her mother Molly (Judy Davis), is not just a revenge-romp (if one that is dusted down with touches of fairy tale and cod psychology). In Billboards, invoking such fictions as 'When they diverted the highway' causes one to think of Psycho (1960), rather - excellently entertaining though it is – than of Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent : Travels in Small-Town America, but perhaps writer / director Martin McDonagh desires to operate on both levels ?
All this anger begets anger ~ Penelope (Samara Weaving)
If it were actually the premise of the film, it was pretty obvious from the title what the billboards would be doing. Even in terms of believing in the film and / or being asked to believe in what the film shows, likewise pinning too much (pun intended) on them cannot be done in literal terms** : people misquote what Hitchcock meant when talking about a MacGuffin, but, in that extended sense, the billboards certainly are one.
Or, rather, they patently are one, but McDonagh will have it that they are not one...
How 'How Three Billboards went from film fest darling to awards-season controversy' seems to miss the point, by talking about redemption, not about the world of the whole film... :https://t.co/qIji7AUUWb— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2018
Billboards that, moreover, are let out no sooner than they are found to exist, with no notion of what repair to them could be needed, and with the bill-posting itself mysteriously carried out well after nightfall ? Is any of this an invitation to believe it, outside of the film ?— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2018
So, having seen @3Billboards (2017), there's a sigh of relief, but forget the party-crowd, intent on laughing at anything that moves :— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 27, 2018
The humour is there, but not eliciting more than a snort, and the richness of it and the audacity are just not at the level of In Bruges (2008). pic.twitter.com/FVsWrczyxe
Some film-references :
* Calvary (2014)
* The Dressmaker (2015)
* The Hairdresser's Husband (Le mari de la coiffeuse) (1990)
As ever, Donald Clarke is well worth a read : 'Three Billboards’ is not suffering a backlash: some people just didn’t like it ~ https://t.co/sZfGzbTWLY— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 28, 2018
End-notes :
* According to Wikipedia®, the closest that we get with Billboards is Ebb, ‘an extinct town in St. Clair County, in the U. S. state of Missouri’.
** For example, as if although (and because) not rented out for the lengthy period of time found in the records of Ebbing Advertising Co. (and despite the obvious dilapidation [if one can have it, of something made of wood, not stone...] of the billboards themselves), the cogency of the installation is not going to need checking and repair before the resumption of an electrical supply. The conceit simply will not bear thinking of thus in those terms, if one had to imagine what would be an appropriate rental (rather than a figure and cash on the desk).
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
