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- #Is three billboards outside ebbing missouri movie#
- #Is three billboards outside ebbing missouri professional#
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The film does center on a stunning performance by McDormand, presenting a portrait of grief that we don't often see: the kind that can lead to a disconnected anger, leading the griever to focus on a mission in hopes that it might bring them healing. I will not spoil Three Billboards for anyone who hasn't seen it by revealing too much about the nuances of the plot. I would like to say here that I believe redemption is something earned-in real life, yes, but I'd also like to see that played out in the characters I'm expected to find a connection with. I imagine, then, that perhaps the problem of Three Billboards is one of who it is being made for: the type of people who might laugh at an extended gag about nigger torturing in the first act while looking forward to the redemption of a racist and abusive police officer in the third.
#Is three billboards outside ebbing missouri movie#
I think about it in those moments, of course, but I also think about it in movie theaters, particularly when I'm at a movie that uses race as a narrative vehicle-a movie that uses black people as part of a storytelling device, but doesn't cater to black people or show the faces of (m)any black people onscreen.
#Is three billboards outside ebbing missouri professional#
In the conversation about being The Only One in the Room, we mainly talk about black people in professional settings. Or maybe the joke is that if we got rid of every racist police officer, we'd have no police at all-according to the white police chief. Or maybe the joke is that McDormand, the righteously angry white protagonist, has a black friend (one of two black people we see in the town) but still thinks provoking a joke about niggers is funny. The joke is that the white cop who tortures black people is trying to stop calling them niggers. I haven't seen any review that asks about the joke's purpose, or who the punchline might be serving. I haven't seen many reviews mention the nigger-torturing gag. I was the only black person in the theater, lured to the film by its glowing reviews-at the time of this writing, it holds a rating of 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, boosted by several notices that gush about how the film is a dark but honest look at humanity and grief.
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It was, of course, supposed to be comic relief.
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When Dixon leaves, Willoughby explains to Hayes that Dixon has a "good heart" and if all police officers with "slightly racist leanings" were removed, there wouldn't be any police officers left.ĭuring the "nigger torturing" exchange between Dixon and Hayes, everyone in the theater around me laughed. Willoughby excuses Dixon, only slightly annoyed. When Willoughby asks what's going on, an exasperated Dixon exclaims: "Sheriff, she asked me how the nigger torturing business was going, and I said you can't say nigger torturing business anymore, you gotta say peoples of color torturing." The gag goes like this: In the midst of being questioned by Dixon, Hayes shoots out "How's the nigger torturing business, Dixon?" Dixon, flustered, offers a response along the lines of "You can't say nigger torturing no more, you gotta say peoples of color torturing." The gag goes back and forth like this, Dixon becoming more and more flustered as Hayes eggs him on, before Woody Harrelson's Sheriff Bill Willoughby enters the room.