Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: Choose Love and Compassion Over Anger and Hatred Anonymous 10th Grade

At its core, acclaimed director/screenwriter/playwright Martin McDonagh’s masterful Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2016) is a film about how transformative and all-consuming rage is and how rage – at least in part – should be replaced with compassion and with love. The film tells the story of Mildred Pearce (played by Frances McDormand, who won a Best Actress Academy Award for her role), middle-aged a woman who is still reeling from the rape and subsequent murder of her daughter. Hurt and incredibly angry, she decides that she will take the Ebbing Police Department (and specifically, Chief Willoughby) to task and demand that further action be taken to catch her daughters rapist and killer. To that end, she decides one day to rent out space on three dilapidated billboards on the far edge of town. “RAPED WHILE DYING,” one reads. “STILL NO ARRESTS?” another says. “HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?” the third and final billboard questions.

These billboards ultimately do little other than provoke rage in both the police department and citizens of Ebbing. They provoke needed questions, to be sure, but they accomplish nothing. In that vein, Mildred is understandably seen as a pariah whose rage has prevented her from acting...