Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI           B                    

USA  Great Britain  (115 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Martin McDonagh             Official Site

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh broke onto the scene with the hilariously inventive In Bruges (2008), an absurd comic drama filled with repulsive dwarf jokes, ridiculous race humor, and a flurry of ethnic slurs, where the marvelously inventive dialogue is so brilliantly written that it serves as a catharsis for all modern ills.  His follow up Seven Psychopaths (2012), while thoroughly enjoyable, seemed to run off the rails, finding itself getting continually sidetracked.  In addition to movies, however, McDonagh has written four other Tony nominated plays, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1998), The Lonesome West (1999), The Pillowman (2005), and The Lieutenant of Irishmore (2006), where he along with older brother John Michael McDonagh, The Guard (2011) and Calvary (2014), have demonstrated a niche for a scathingly incendiary, free-wheeling writing style that has all the makings of some of the best writing found anywhere in the world today.  And wherever you find writing of this caliber, unmatched, high quality performances are bound to follow.  Enter Frances McDormand, whose riveting work with the Coen brothers in Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996) have elevated her into actress royalty, where this film only confirms her status as one of America’s greatest actresses.  Written with her in mind, McDormand epitomizes an actress fully inhabiting her role, always playing fiercely independent, no-nonsense characters, where in this film, she’s tough enough to stand up to any man, and then proceeds to do so throughout the film, showing uncommon fortitude, which eventually grates on those closest to her, feeling like they already have enough of a load to carry.  As Mildred Hayes, a single mother raising two high school age kids in a tiny rural setting in Missouri not far from the Ozarks (though actually shot in the mountainous hills of North Carolina), whose ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes) ran off with a lame-brained 19-year old who’s closer to a daughter than a girlfriend, making a sick statement about the maturity of the men in the vicinity, yet her biggest ordeal was losing her daughter to a brutally vicious sex crime that remains unsolved after seven months, with no possible leads in sight.  Seeing three broken-down billboards along an isolated country road exactly where the crime occurred, Mildred gets the idea of using the billboards to make a provocative statement (much like the catchy Burma Shave billboard advertisements in the days of yore), going on local TV telling the public, “My daughter Angela was murdered 7 months ago, it seems to me the police department is too busy torturing black folk to solve actual crimes.”  It is no minor coincidence that the notorious racial disturbances of Ferguson just happen to be in the same state.  And lest we forget, Missouri was a late addition to the Southern Confederacy.    

What we have in the police department is a permanent state of dysfunction, with the relatively decent Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) overseeing a bunch a derelicts, led by the hapless Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a numbskull officer with a hair-trigger temper and a reputation for crossing the line into racist mistreatment of black suspects, which is conveniently overlooked by the other members of the department.  At home, living on the outskirts of town, Dixon is a Mama’s boy, urged on by his hateful mother, Sandy Martin, always seen with a cocktail in her hand, browbeating her inept son to be more aggressively intimidating, making a statement by his very presence, but actually making others around him more nervous, as he’s a hothead, viewed as a constant embarrassment, going overboard on the most trivial matters, yet he has an endearing habit of confessing his shortcomings, even if unintentionally, and telling the exasperated truth, as if he’s always answering to his mother.  No doubt motivated by all the attention the billboards cause in town, Willoughby pays a visit to Mildred, whose initial response is classic, “The time it took you to get out here whining like a bitch, Willoughby, some other poor girl’s probably out there being butchered.”  Reporting there is no blood match in any national DNA database, Willoughby even acknowledges he’s dying of cancer, but Mildred is unsympathetic, claiming they could be doing more, as they’re hardly the picture of a dedicated and hard-working police department, especially with a goofball on the loose like Dixon.  The entire town, it seems, turns against Mildred, as their sympathies lie with Willoughby, a popular family man, but the more they try to get her to back down, the more resolute she is, knowing there is a greater chance of success in breaking the case if the event remains in the public headlines.  Mildred’s own son, however, Robbie (Lucas Hedges), is disgusted by his mother’s antics, as it’s a constant reminder of his sister’s loss, something already dominating his thoughts, where he seems to have no peace from the subject when its continually being shoved into his face.  At school, after her car windshield is egged by anonymous students unhappy with her tactics, she kicks the shit out of a few of the closest suspects, fully demonstrating how a bad ass behaves, much to Robbie’s displeasure, as that’s only adding more fuel to the fire.  When the police start arresting her friends for some trumped up charge, this only escalates the terms of engagement for Mildred, who goes on the warpath. 

While there is a prevailing sense of humor throughout, much of it surprisingly offbeat, which typifies the director’s earlier works, but this one has greater dramatic reach, mirroring a prevailing feeling that there is something flawed about our criminal justice system, as so often the wrong criminals are charged, often languishing in prison for decades for crimes they didn’t commit, while the guilty parties are never charged, including a host of white police officers that are exonerated after killing unarmed black teenagers, a customary practice that never seems to end.  Mildred’s outrage at the lack of accountability for such a heinous crime taps into a similar mood felt throughout the country where there is no appearance of justice anymore, as no one is held accountable for some of the biggest crimes, like corporate theft and the layers of lawyers and lies that protect the guilty parties from prosecution.  In Mildred’s case, it’s like a hit and run, with no one witnessing the crime, where the culprit gets away scot free.  In a brief flashback sequence, there is an extra layer of guilt heaped upon Mildred for the last words coming out of her mouth just before Angela was raped and murdered, which only add to what is already an excruciating pain that never dissipates.  Mildred is an angry women, apparently mad at everyone, cursing out everyone she encounters with a mouth like a sailor, where she just feels like there is no justice left in the world.  Yet there are moments when her anger subsides and she turns instantly tender and understanding, where her mood shifts on a dime, such as when Willoughby coughs up blood during an interrogation, where a shock of mortality brings us all to our knees, becoming instantly sympathetic, no matter our beliefs.  These moments occur throughout the film, having a humanizing effect, even as it comically grows even more absurd.  There’s an interesting use of music, particularly a mournful Joan Baez rendition of a Civil War lament, Joan Baez - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - YouTube (3:26), which comes at a particularly incendiary moment, adding yet another layer of Civil War madness and grief, recounting the escalating saga of brother against brother unending violence that seems to perpetuate itself when every act is retaliated against, leading to a neverending stream of aggression and hostility, leaving hordes of victims in the wake, each one an inconsolable loss exactly like Angela.  There’s also an interesting use of letters in the film, each one coming from the grave, which are read out loud, offering a reservoir of wisdom and humor that seems to catch viewers by surprise, if only due to how unorthodox this technique seems to be, unearthing formidable emotions that have a healing effect on the community, where the anger and bitterness remain, but there is a chance it may subside into something else altogether, like forgiveness, perhaps even a friendship.       

Low Down

LOW DOWN         C+                       

USA  (114 mi)  2014  ‘Scope d:  Jeff Preiss          Official Site

One day we’re walking down the street, passing a newsstand, when I stop and pick up a magazine (maybe Life) with Thelonious Monk of the cover. I kiss it, and say, ‘Hi Monk.’ Dad, combusting with pride, picks me up, looks at me with those beautiful gray-green eyes, and says: ‘From now on, you’re not just my baby, you’re my ace-one-boon-white-coon.’ That, he would claim, was the day we forever connected, and became more to each other than everything.

I  loved him out of all proportion, as only a daughter could.

—Amy-Jo Albany (Elle Fanning)

There’s usually an intriguing allure to films centered around the outer fringes of society, that delve into a bohemian, neon-lit subterranean world exposing hardships of the human kind that border on madness, where the pursuit of artistic freedom becomes more than a passionate endeavor but a moral obligation, often lost in the smoky haze of narcotics and drug abuse, where in the words of American poet Allen Ginsberg in his epic 1955 poem Howl, Howl, Parts I & II | Academy of American Poets:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking

for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly

connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking

in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating

across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

Written by his daughter Amy-Jo Albany (Elle Fanning), Low Down:  Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales from Childhood is a 2003 memoir by the daughter of a legendary but obscure jazz pianist Joe Albany (John Hawkes), one of the few white pianists to play Bebop with Charlie Parker in the 40’s and 50’s, but also a heroin addict and prison convict for a major part of his life.  Growing up on the dingy side of Hollywood among addicts, prostitutes, and various social misfits, the film is a dim reminder of what jagged edges some lives become, where every day is a struggle to survive, much of it lost on wasted opportunities.  Less about Albany’s chronic drug troubles and run-ins with the law, the film is more about a young adolescent’s rose-colored view of her father, trying to make sense out of the chaotic turmoil that was her life growing up in the 70’s, where she substitutes her interior heartache with larger-than-life embellishments of her father, making him out to be some kind of mythical hero.  Blind to the adult realities, her father a junky, her absent mother Sheila (Lena Headey), a former singer and full-time alcoholic, the overall tone is confusing and the story uneven and unfocused, filled with various recollections that rarely get under the surface, basically becoming a primer course on how to destroy your life and the loved ones around you.  Through it all, however, she prevails and writes the book, which is the point of the film, though despite a gutty performance by Fanning, she’s not really the interesting part of the story.  Joe’s the guy we’re interested in, as there’s so much about him we don’t know, but his life is largely unexplored and for long periods of time he’s not even in the picture, as Jo is shipped off to grandmother’s house, none other than Glenn Close, a six-time Oscar nominee looking surprisingly like Robin Williams in MRS. DOUBTFIRE (1993).  On Friday nights Gram is glued to the screen watching boxing matches, and on one wall in her home she has on display that legenday photo of Black Panther Party co-founder and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton (seen here: Huey Newton.).  What’s also uniquely intriguing, but never explored, is the drug addiction of a jazz pianist, as more typically the addicts are horn players and lead singers, or both.  The piano is more of a percussive instrument in Bebop jazz, like Thelonious Monk (Jo’s idol in the opening quote), a driving, rhythmic force in simpatico with the drums and bass players, where you’d think they need to be clear-headed and sharp to play some of the more complicated arrangements.  

Surrounded by dysfunction, Jo is the worried daughter that spends much of her youth looking after the interests of her father, trying to maintain control and be the adult in the situation.  While Joe played with jazz legends Lester Young and Charlie Parker, it was more than a decade ago, as we only hear about it in offhanded conversations or in fan photos that decorate Jo’s bedroom walls.  When we see him play, he’s in some anonymous jazz trio in small clubs or off in some dingy bar somewhere playing alone.  By the time Jo is old enough to remember her father, the Bebop era is largely over, where the American disinterest in jazz (and repeated parole violations) drove Joe overseas to Europe.  After several years of repeated drug offenses, his passport is revoked and he’s sent back to America, revelations that are part and parcel with her growing up stage, as a stream of more unpleasant realities begin to creep into her life.  Joe’s life descends into a morass of addiction, where he simply can’t stop himself from using, becoming more gloomy and fatalistic, where by the end of the film each character has a major dramatic moment, as if Jo is revisiting her final moments with each of them, allowing them perhaps to finally just be themselves, naked and unvarnished, and not some embellished memory.  Why couldn’t the rest of the film be like that?  These brief moments suggest a much better film could have been made without the naïve innocence and child adulation that constantly comes in conflict with overtly traumatic subject matter.  While the director attempts to establish a turbulent family relationship, what plays out onscreen is continuously self-destructive and troublesome, leading to dramatic meltdowns and melodramatic overreach instead of real, full-fledged character development.  Chalk this up to inexperience.     

Despite a brief recording career in Europe and a few more sessions in the 70’s, Albany is largely unrecorded in the prime of his life, where a single 1957 LP exists entitled The Right Combination with Wayne Marsh on tenor sax and Bob Whitlock on bass.  The first song we hear in the film is Angel Eyes, where ironically one of the definitive, narcotic-induced renditions of this song Gene Ammons - Angel Eyes - YouTube (8:52) is played by Chicago tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons, another addict who spent much of his life incarcerated for narcotics possession.  Albany is a non-stop smoker throughout, as much a part of the jazz scene as alcohol or heroin, where the low ceilings and poor ventilation in the clubs also increased the health risks.  The film is infused with classic jazz music of the era, like Coleman Hawkins, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach, with an extended piece played live before an audience by Albany over the closing credits, shot in grainy Super 16mm by Christopher Blauvelt, where the first-time director attempts to capture the atmospheric look of the dingy rooms and smoky clubs, but next to no insight develops here, as the depressive, downbeat mood overwhelms any attempt to reveal something significant, becoming more of an adolescent diary format from a young girl coming-of-age.  Much better films are Bent Hamer’s Factotum (2005), exquisitely shot on 35mm, similarly exploring the seedy world of Los Angeles as it follows a fictionalized world of drunk poet Charles Bukowski, also Philippe Garrel’s I Don’t Hear the Guitar Anymore (J'entends plus la guitare) (1991), an autobiographical film that reveals the ten year romance of the French film director with Velvet Underground singer Nico, much of it spent in the throes of drug addiction and a constant fix, an unglamorous view that is downbeat and utterly sad, where an unsparing confessional tone is mixed with a raw internal dysfunction, with outstanding original music by French jazz pianist Faton Cahen, a piano and a few ascending jazz riffs on a sax, offering an eloquent testament to a narcotic induced haze.  

Martha Marcy May Marlene

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE                 A                   

USA  (101 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Sean Durkin

Well she, she's just a picture
Who lives on my wall
Well she, she's just a picture
And the reason, reason, reason it is so small
With a smile so inviting and a body so tall
She, she's just a picture
Just a picture
That's all

Well you stand there, stand there with the nightshade
Her dripping ripping down your hands
And you ask me, ask me about the lightning
And the lady, lady, lady she understands
It's a dream for the future and the water for the sands
And the strangeness is wandering
Through many callin' lands

I'd give you, give you quite freely
All the clothes on your gipsy bait
And I'd suffer, suffer so long in prison
If I knew you'd have to wait
With the wind scouring sandstone
And the ashes in your grate
Somewhere no devil emperor
The great whale's gone
The holy plate

And this caravan it becomes an alter
And the priests, the priests are big as none
And I'll share, share our time together
Until our time together is done
But your skin it was pretty
And I loved, I loved another one
Now she, she's just like some picture
That has faded in the sun

Well she, she's just a picture
Who lives on my wall
Well she, she's just a picture
And the reason, reason, reason is so small
With a smile so inviting and a body so tall
Well she, she's just a picture
Just a picture
That's all
Just a picture
That's all

—“Marcy’s Song,” by Jackson C. Frank from Martha Marcy May Marlene

Marcy's Song by John Hawkes - YouTube  (3:49)

Marcy's Song - Jackson C. Frank.  YouTube (4:31)

Winner of the Best Director Award at Sundance, Durkin has crafted a mesmerizing piece of cinema that insists upon naturalism and simplicity, revealing just how effortless it feels to be under the spell of good direction that doesn’t rely upon computer graphics for special effects, creating a murky interior atmosphere that slides back and forth in time, never knowing just where you are at the beginning of each shot.  The idea behind the film is imagining what would happen in the first few weeks after fleeing from an emotionally abusive cult, where your real family has no idea whatsoever what you've been through, creating a culture clash or a psychic rupture.  This is a film that also uses darkness and light, also the edges of the screen throughout, shot by Jody Lee Lipes, where characters move freely in and out of the frame, where often the focus is only in a corner or in a small piece of the larger picture shown onscreen, where occasionally a human face remains split along the edge.  There’s a beautiful visual scheme that is heightened by a brilliant sound and editing design, where it’s the intelligence of the filmmaking itself that distinguishes this edgy feature as the creepiest film experience of the year, reminiscent of Polanski’s REPULSION (1965), where the initial innocence of getting back to nature and living on a farm commune in the Catskill Mountains of New York becomes a psychotic break from reality for Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) when the women become the exclusive property of the cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes), a Charles Manson like persona whose motivation seems to be to redefine the entire world around him in his own image, where everyone and everything belongs to him.  He even takes her name, calling her Marcy May, where she quickly loses all sense of who she is.  Martha is initially confused by an initiation rape sequence from Patrick, where it is the women afterwards who reveal this as the spreading of communal love, that all must remain open to it, as it is a special moment to cherish.  In this way they break her spirit and her conception of free will, and in doing so accept her into their community, offering her a place where she belongs. 

Early in the film, however, we see Martha methodically step over her sleeping roommates one morning in an attempted escape, where a near indecipherable phone call for help reveals her jangled state of mind, overwhelmed by the circumstances and unable to make any sense out of it.  She is soon safely in the comfortable upscale surroundings of a heavily windowed vacation home on a lake owned by her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her British architectural wizard for a husband, Hugh Dancy as Ted.  Neither have heard a word from Martha in the past two years and she’s not eager to share her personal experiences, remaining glum and depressed, uncommunicative, sleeping most of the time, not fitting in here at all, as she finds all the monetary wealth and exhibitionism on display personally revolting, knowing a dozen people could live in this vast amount of space that is currently used by only two.  Her thoughts continually drift back and forth, filling in some of the intimate details of just what happened during her two years, followed by equally inhumane treatment by her more conservative and socially uptight family who find her abnormal behavior morally intolerable, as she just sits around doing nothing, or makes odd behavioral choices that send them into a rage of disapproval, where they continue to be harshly judgmental instead of supportive, not having a clue what she’s endured.  At the farm, Patrick singles her out, making her the girl that matters most of all, but only so long as she latches herself onto him, even writing a song in her honor, Marcy's Song by John Hawkes - YouTube  (3:49), making her feel wanted and special, the exact opposite of how she feels with her sister where she feels utterly helpless, growing more paranoid, completely alienated and alone.

The theme of the film seems to rest with Martha’s haunting confession to her sister:  “Do you ever have that feeling where you can't tell if something is a memory or a dream?”  Unable to reassemble the broken pieces of her life, her spirit remains crushed and shattered, where Olsen is excellent portraying that glum expressionless stupor, much like the other women at the farm, none of whom ever smile or have anything to be thankful about, yet they carry out Patrick’s wishes with few missteps, as he brings the wrath upon anyone who disobeys or even questions his authority.  The deeper she sinks into this world of repressed anger and self-loathing, the harder it is to recognize herself, where what she thought was freedom has turned into involuntary servitude.  Long after she escapes the farm, she continues to imagine that she sees the cult leaders everywhere she goes, believing they are after her, that they will never let her be.  Durkin beautifully interweaves the two threads, where what’s real and what’s imagined become indecipherable, creating an all but unbearable mounting tension and suspense.  This is a powerful film that defies predictability and the norm by using thoroughly self-absorbed and unlikable characters, where the world becomes even more despicable with an unloving family who finds fault with everything she does, becoming holier than thou, super moralistic, symptomatic of their own shallow interests that can’t tolerate differences.  You never really know where this is going, a world with no escape, as Patrick starts spouting Manson gibberish about love is death after awhile, advocating violence and murder, perhaps rationalizing in his own mind some of the evil that is done in his name, where Martha in her mind never stops seeing them, as if they’re about to burst through the next room.  The audience senses they are there, the barbarians gathering at the gate, an ominous threat that pervades both the past and the present, elusive, yet all powerful, expressed through an abstract palette consumed in disturbing imagery.  The spare indie score by Saunder Jurriaans and Danny Bensi haunts the already tense and creepy atmosphere with melancholic counterpoint for a poetic memory play of a woman under relentless psychological assault that couldn’t be a more exquisite offering.