Yet, there are scenes in which Hayes breaks down and McDormand reminds the viewers that she is still, after all, a grieving mother. She convinces the viewers, through a remarkable portrayal of stoicism, that her character is a woman whose humanity is being slowly chipped away by massive hardship and trauma. This is where the brilliance of McDormand’s performance lies. When a cop reminds her that action against her abusive ex-husband cannot be taken because it’s her word against his, she retorts by telling him that action cannot be taken against her for injuring a hostile dentist because it’s his word against hers.Īnd Hayes does all this with a stone face. She learns to use the system’s loopholes to her advantage. Hayes realises that there is no point in being good if the system which holds the guilty accountable is itself broken. Hayes is a character who has seen that the broken system of law and order in her town does not work.Īnd much like what happens to Walter White from Breaking Bad or Frank Castle from The Punisher, this distorts her sense of morality. And tragically, she does not even care about the value of human life in her quest for solace. She does not care about the morality of using a dwarf’s feelings for her to achieve her goals. She does not care about the repercussions of attacking a police station. She will still kick them hard in the gonads. She does not care if some of the people acting out against her because of the billboards are teenagers. Hayes does not care about the fact that the man whom she has targeted in the billboards is dying of cancer. Her pain and anger have turned her into an almost stone-hearted person who, least bothered by the humiliations she has to face, is single-mindedly focused on getting revenge.
Three billboards outside ebbing missouri real story movie#
The billboards are supposed to highlight the sloppy job done by the police because of which no arrests have been made in the case.Īs the movie progresses, Hayes has to face immense hostility from the townsfolk and even her own family due to the billboards.īut Mildred Hayes does not care.
In the movie, Mildred Hayes is an exhausted but determined mother who, overcome with grief and rage after the rape and murder of her teenage daughter, rents three billboards and puts up outraged messages directed at William Willoughby (Harrelson), the town’s chief of police. Hayes is the perfect personification of the anger, frustration and (most importantly) resolve born out of the #MeToo movement and the innumerable accounts of sexual assault that have surfaced in the past year. Image courtesy: importance of this fact during times like these cannot be overstated. Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
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