21 pop culture moments in 2017 that spoke to the zeitgeist

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

The news that Irish playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh was making a movie about police brutality immediately sent a red flag up. On one hand, In Bruges is one of my favorite comedies. And I’m fond of Seven Psychopaths, despite its messiness. However, any fictional work dealing with a subject this weighty requires tact — a quality not among McDonagh’s strong suits.

As it turns out, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri isn’t really about police brutality. Frances McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a divorced, out-of-work mother whose daughter was raped and murdered. Mildred mourns the way any parent would: by renting three billboards and shaming the local police chief for his failure to catch her daughter’s killer. Unfortunately, not only is Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) popular with the townsfolk, but he has terminal cancer. When a hotheaded cop named Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) gets involved, the hullabaloo around the billboards escalates into violence.

Dixon, you see, achieved notoriety for assaulting a suspect who was black. Rather than vilifying him, though, Three Billboards grants him a redemption arc of sorts. It results in a movie that’s as polarizing as its titular signs, with admirers praising it as challenging and poignant and critics denouncing it as tasteless and shallow. Does the marginalization of people of color complicate or invalidate its celebration of righteous female rage? What exactly should we take away from all the ugliness?

I can’t pretend to have all (or any) of the answers; a month later, I remain conflicted. But whatever its merits or failings as a political statement, McDonagh’s neo-noir captures a mood of anger, uncertainty, and grief that feels very 2017. The last line, so simple on the surface, lands like a knife. (Of course, it helps that it’s said by McDormand.) Besides, what’s more appropriate for this political climate than a movie no one agrees on?