Film Analysis: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Executive Summary Released in late 2017, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Director of Photography Ben Davis (a frequent McDonagh collaborator) shoots Ebbing, Missouri as both beautiful and desolate. The billboards stand against rolling green hills and endless blue skies—nature indifferent to human suffering. The score by Carter Burwell is melancholic, sparse, and occasionally whimsical. But the film’s most striking musical moment is the use of Ironside (Theme from ‘Ironside’) by Quincy Jones during Mildred’s billboard-raising montage. It turns her act of civil disobedience into a superhero origin story. threebillboardsoutsideebbingmissouri2017u
The film opens on a haunting image: Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a hardened, chain-smoking divorcée, drives past three derelict billboards on a forgotten road outside the fictional town of Ebbing, Missouri. Her daughter, Angela, was raped and murdered seven months earlier. The local police, led by beloved but ailing Chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), has made no arrests. Topic: “We Can Decide Along the Way”: The
This act of aggression kicks off a tit-for-tat war between Mildred and the town's authorities, particularly the racist, alcoholic, and violently unstable Officer Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell). not a narrative flaw.
Director of photography Ben Davis bathes Ebbing in golden-hour melancholy – wheat fields, empty roads, and the stark red of the billboards. Carter Burwell’s sparse, piano-driven score (including a mournful rendition of “His Master’s Voice”) avoids manipulation. The film uses songs by Townes Van Zandt (the haunting “Buckskin Stallion Blues”) to underline the characters’ exhaustion.
