A Jaundiced View of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing

I am loth to criticise anything associated with the late great Townes Van Zandt and a film that includes both his own version of Buckskin Stallion Blues at the beginning and Amy Anelle’s version at the end is bound to engage my sympathy – initially. However, the more I think about this film the less I like it. It’s entertaining and constantly engrossing but I still left the cinema with a bad taste in my mouth. Fargo it ain’t although it’s set in the same kind of quirky small-town location and has the same actress as main character. It’s a cold confection, lacking the charm of the latter movie. It wasn’t Frances McDorman’s fault – she was superb in the main role as was Sam Rockwell as the red-neck deputy. And Woody Harrelson did his thing as the sheriff – all folksy authenticity. Mind you I don’t know how he came to be married to a young Australian (Abbie Cornish) in Missouri but maybe I missed something. I suppose my major gripe was the whole farcical nature of the enterprise and the lack of reality in the seemingly realistic scenario.  I have no problem with farce or black comedy per se, but too many elements in the film didn’t convince me.  No mere deputy would be allowed to carry on as Rockwell did without censure from his seemingly decent boss and colleagues. Why were there no repercussions when McDormand assaulted two schoolchildren, attacked the dentist and burnt down the police station. At the very least she would have been held under suspicion for the latter. And to be a little petty, would such a small town have its own advertising agency?

The ostensible cause of the whole ruckus, the rape and murder of McDormand’s daughter, was only briefly and unsympathetically attended to – and never resolved. And why, oh why, expose Peter Dinklage (the dwarf in Game of Thrones) to a cruel and dwarfist vignette where his amatory ambitions were cruelly sneered at and dismissed. I think the bottom line for me is that the film was a series of visually spectacular and dramatic set pieces that didn’t coalesce into a convincing creation. It entertained briefly but irritated long-term. A bit like my relationship with plum pudding – I like the initial taste, the fruity bits and the brandy hit but then it lies leadenly in my stomach for hours.

Recent Reads - January 2018

Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson
***
Patricia Highsmith was a fascinating character right down to the snails she carried around in her handbag and her voracious sexual appetite. She became an active and predatory lesbian while still a school girl – at a time (the late 1930s) when it was very much a love that dare not speak its name. No married woman or visiting journalist was spared her advances and she had a hit rate that would put Don Juan to shame. She was also a decent writer of entertaining novels – usually with a dark flavour. However, her biographer spends way to much time analyzing her books in detail – she was no Dostoyevsky. Her life, especially her tortured relationship with her mother, was more interesting than her work and this book would have been better if it were a third shorter than its 500 pages.


The Rub of Time by Martin Amis
***
I prefer Amis’s non-fiction to his fiction – especially in recent years. Earlier in his career I enjoyed Money and London Fields. But The Moronic Inferno, The War Against Cliché and Koba the Dread worked better for me. His latest entertaining collection throws its net wide embracing poker, porn, politics and literature. There’s even a piece on the Tangerine Terror across the Atlantic. There are very few duds and I especially liked his two essays on Philip Larkin where his ongoing admiration is tinged with some recent reservations. There’s also a very astute piece on Nabokov and of course something on his hero Saul Bellow. It’s not all high art – there’s a very good piece on the renaissance of John Travolta and a rather sad piece on his fading tennis skills.

Sticky Fingers – the Life and Times of Jann Wenner by Joe Hagan
***
I expected to enjoy this a lot more than I actually did. Maybe I grew weary of the relentless confirmation of what a prick the founder of Rolling Stone actually is. He had the gumption to realize that he could monetize the whole sex, drugs, and rock and roll scene that developed in San Francisco in the Sixties and didn’t much care who he stepped over to accomplish this. His interaction with people like John Lennon and Mick Jagger are occasionally interesting – the Stones were not amused that he called his magazine after them and threatened legal action. He pointed out that they had in turn taken their name from a Muddy Waters’ song and in the end there was a compromise whereby he let Jagger control a UK edition (which quickly foundered). There’s plenty of entertaining tittle tattle about sex and drugs and who was sleeping with who – everybody with everybody it seems. The early drug-fueled chaos of producing the magazine is amusing but it’s now a corporate advertising platform that not many people care about. I gave up about half-way through its 550 pages. I may dip in again if I’m stuck.


Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
*****

This is a stone masterpiece. I avoided it for a long time because I felt queasy about the basic premise – uneasy spirits chatting in a grave yard while Abraham Lincoln mourns his recently deceased young son. But it works. The chatty corpses in Limbo are in denial about their state and look back towards their unfinished business on earth. They also take a keen interest in whether Lincoln’s son will linger restlessly with them or pass over fully. Their conversations are punctuated by contemporary accounts of Lincoln and his son, how he died and how the family dealt with the tragedy. It came as the American Civil War was in full spate and many thousands of families were mourning their dead. It’s a sophisticated and thought-provoking novel and it has sent me off to discover Saunders’ earlier works (all short story collections).


Midwinter Break by Bernard McLaverty
***

This is hardly the classic I was expecting from all the laudatory reviews I read over the past 6 months. It was a reasonably convincing portrait of a marriage stuck together by old custom that endured despite the yearning of the female partner for something more spiritually satisfying. She had survived a shooting in Northern Ireland and also felt the need to keep a promise to God. The husband’s relentless drinking (morning, noon and night) seemed unconvincing to me. The ice metaphor was a trifle crass also I felt – a bit too obvious. It kept me mildly entertained – no more.