Frances McDormand wins for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

[Nergal]

 

MARGOT Robbie transformed into unfiltered trailer trash as disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya. Sally Hawkins pulled heartstrings and made us fall for a creature from the deep in The Shape of Water. Meryl Streep did, well, what only Meryl Streep can do in The Post. Saoirse Ronan personified troubled, but endearing, teenagerhood in Lady Bird.

But none of this year’s Best Actress nominees ever stood a chance at the Oscars alongside the night’s winner, 60-year-old Frances McDormand.

In Martin McDonagh’s unrelenting, tragicomic Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a mother whose grief has turned to anger nine months after the still unsolved rape and murder of her teenage daughter.

She buys advertising space on three billboards on the edge of town, calling out the local police chief for doing nothing to catch the killer. And then remains unapologetic, defiant, foul-mouthed and determined to find justice through all the chaotic ramifications.

A five-time Oscar nominee, this marks McDormand’s second Best Actress win, the previous coming 21 years ago for Fargo. The US veteran’s acceptance speeches throughout awards season have been an unpredictable, regularly bleeped delight.

Though Australian star Robbie lost out to McDormand at all of this big season’s awards shows from the Golden Globes on, she was honoured just to be in the company of her fellow Best Actress Academy Award nominees.

“These actresses are people I admire so much. They make me want to be a better actor just by watching their films, let alone having my name uttered in the same breath as them,” Robbie told The Australian while in Sydney in January.

Even as it kept winning awards — including Best Film, British Film, Actress and Original Screenplay at the BAFTAs — Three Billboards faced something of a backlash, with critics picking apart its handling of race.

But no critic could doubt the rage in the film’s leading lady, as Vanity Fair put it: “a force so overwhelming in McDormand’s Mildred Hayes that it permeates every cell of her being, from her clenched jaw to her denim war fatigues she never removes. McDonagh’s outsider gaze is a fair critique, but no one seems to be faulting McDormand for capturing a feeling many in America can relate to at this particular moment.”

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has grossed $10.15 million at the Australian box office and $158.72 million worldwide.