There has undoubtedly been a shift in attitudes towards anti-heroines very recently. How much this has to do with the allegations made against powerful men in the film industry over the past few months is debatable, but their rise in popular culture has certainly come at the right time.
In some cases, the correlation is clear. It isn’t hard to see, for example, how the accusations against Kevin Spacey directly led to Robin Wright’s taking over of House of Cards as the morally corrupt protagonist. But even if the making of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri had nothing to do with these recent events, its release is incredibly well-timed. Right now, a lot of people are holding out to see women rise above the circumstances they find themselves in.
Frances McDormand portrays the tight-lipped, unyielding leading woman of Three Billboards, who confronts the passive indifference towards sexual assault that plagues her small rural town. Seven months after the rape and murder of Mildred’s teenage daughter, Angela, all the outrage that once emboldened the town to seek justice has dissipated into nothing more than a sad memory. But for Mildred these wounds are still raw, and beneath her stony-faced exterior she lives in constant guilt and anguish.
Three billboards are thus established outside the town: “RAPED WHILE DYING”, “AND STILL NO ARRESTS?”, and “HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?”
This spark lights a fire, reigniting the anger of the townspeople – but this time, it is directed at Mildred. This raging fire escalates into a series of events that, at its core, is a representation of how society treats victims of assault long after the crime was committed. Non-recent crimes are often perceived as incidents that should be left in the past and not spoken about. Any attempts to resolve them are seen as opening old wounds – wounds that, for some people, never healed in the first place.
Not counting Angela’s unknown attacker, there is no real antagonist in Three Billboards. The people of Ebbing are made up of various shades of grey, with even the most obnoxious amongst them showing some sliver of empathy given the right circumstances.
Woody Harrelson’s Chief Willoughby and Sam Rockwell’s Dixon together represent the major flaws and corruption of the US police force. While they do ultimately decide to side with Mildred, Three Billboards is careful not to glorify them as heroes. Just like Mildred, they are individuals fighting their own battles, trying to make sense of a situation that has no easy solution.
Three Billboards often feels like a balancing act, keeping everything on a perfect equilibrium – the seriousness and the humour, the intense action and the moments of silence, the anger and the resignation. Director Martin McDonagh maintains this symmetry right to the end, where Mildred and Dixon hunt for a known rapist, yet at the same time start to realise that the time for outrage may have passed.
As Penelope so simply puts it, “anger begets anger”. There is a time for a war and a time for peace, but the line that divides these is often muddled and confusing. McDonagh doesn’t attempt to draw the line so much as he illustrates the morally grey areas around it.
The contemporary iteration of the anti-heroine is a brilliantly innovative way to examine how we talk about sexism and violence, and it is exactly what we need right now. While Mildred certainly isn’t the first morally ambiguous female character to have come out of Hollywood, Three Billboards effectively refines this trope to create a genuinely sensitive illustration of our attitudes towards sexual assault.
