Every year, there’s at least one Best Picture contender, critical darling and frontrunner, and faces the slings and arrows of awards season backlash. This year, that mantle belongs to “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” The latest from Martin McDonagh picked up considerable steam on the fall festival circuit, wining the coveted Audience Award at TIFF, which has in recent years become an augur of Oscar success.
However, across the past month or so, the tide has been turning, with many voicing their unease with the picture. In particular, questions have been raised about Oscar nominee Sam Rockwell‘s character, a racist Southern cop who some perceive as getting undeserving sympathetic moral arc. McDonagh has heard those criticisms, and in a new interview with EW, shares his perspective about how his movie treats the character.
“I don’t think his character is redeemed at all – he starts off as a racist jerk. He’s the same pretty much at the end, but, by the end, he’s seen that he has to change. There is room for it, and he has, to a degree, seen the error of his ways, but in no way is he supposed to become some sort of redeemed hero of the piece,” he said.
“It’s supposed to be a deliberately messy and difficult film. Because it’s a messy and difficult world,” McDonagh added. “You have to kind of hold up a mirror to that a little bit and say we don’t have any kind of solution. But I think there’s a lot of hope and humanity in the film and if you look at all those issues with those things in your heart, we might move on to a more interesting place.”
It’s an interesting defence, and I’d agree that Rockwell’s character isn’t entirely forgiven; perhaps the difficulty is that the film asks the audience to step into his shoes. And while McDonagh wants people to like his movie, he does acknowledge that, “We’re trying to do something that’s a bit little more difficult and more thoughtful.” Thus, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Thoughts? Hit up the comments section.