Movie Review: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen.

Written by: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen.

Starring – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Tim Blake Nelson (Buster Scruggs), David Krumholtz (Frenchman in Saloon), Clancy Brown (Curly Joe), Harry Melling (Harrison), Jesse Luken (Drover), Jefferson Mays (Gilbert Longabaugh), Danny McCarthy (Ike).

Starring – Near Algodones: James Franco (Cowboy), Stephen Root (Teller), Ralph Ineson (The Man In Black).

Starring – Meal Ticket: Liam Neeson (Impresario), Harry Melling (Orator), Paul Rae (Impressario), Jiji Hise (The Bawd).

Starring – All Gold Canyon: Tom Waits (Prospector), Sam Dillon (Young Man).

Starring – The Gal Who Got Rattled: Zoe Kazan (Alice Longabaugh), Bill Heck (Billy Knapp), Grainger Hines (Mr. Arthur), Billy Lockwood (Father), Ethan Dubin (Matt). 

Starring – The Mortal Remains: Brendan Gleeson (Irishman), Tyne Daly (Lady), Saul Rubinek (Frenchman), Chelcie Ross (Trapper), Jonjo O'Neill (Thigpen).

 

I have seen every Coen brothers film multiple times, and its fair to say that I am a devoted fan of their work – the pair has wriggled into my upper pantheon of directors like Scorsese, Kubrick and Hitchcock over the years. One of the reasons why that is the case is because they never stop surprising me in their work, and yet it’s all very clearly their own work. Yes, the tones of just their last two films – the morbid Inside Llewyn Davis and the screwball comedy Hail, Caesar couldn’t be more different – but they are clearly the work of the same people, who have a dark, absurd sense of humor, and delight in punishing their characters, and pushing the buttons of those in the audience. Their latest film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is a Western anthology – six stories – that was originally meant to be a short TV series for Netflix, before the brothers made (what I think is the right call) and just turned it into a movie, telling dark, absurd, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, always violent stories of the old West. The film is, in many ways, genre pastiche – and you’ll recognize elements from famed films, directors and stars littered throughout the six stories, and yet they’re all Coen brothers.

 

The first story is about a singing cowboy – Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) – who we see riding on his course, strumming a guitar, and crooning like he’s Roy Rogers, before he directly addresses the camera to introduce himself. He seems like such a nice guy – but then he holds up a Wanted Poster – for himself – which describes him as a misanthrope (an insult, not coincidentally, that is often leveled at the brothers themselves), which he thinks is absurd. When he arrives in a small town, and wants to sit down and play poker, it starts an absurdly violent and over the top series of bloody gunfights.

 

From there, the Coens move onto a story of a would be bank robber (James Franco), who finds himself in one near death experience that would seem to be impossible to escape from after another after another, until even he starts to think the whole thing is little more than a sick joke. The third story goes incredibly dark, and stars Liam Neeson as a man who runs a travelling show – in which an armless, legless man delivers a long monologue of greatest hits from other writers, before an ever decreasing number of people – leading to a ruthless, if logical, business decision on Neeson’s behalf. Then there is Tom Waits (a perfect Coen brother’s actor) as an old prospector, who digs and digs and digs, convinced that Mr. Pocket is hiding out there somewhere – and paranoid someone else may stumble on him first.

 

The longest of the stories is the next to last one about a Wagon Train headed to a new territory. A quiet, shy woman, Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) is travelling with her brother, who dies early in the trip, which leaves her with no money. One of the two men running the Wagon Train (Bill Heck) takes a shine to her – but when wanders away from the path, it is the other, older man (Grainger Hines), who follows with tragic consequences. The last story is the most surreal – and has five people sitting on a stage coach together, all heading towards a rooming house of some sort, all discussing their various thoughts and outlooks on life and death – their being a weird circular logic that brings it all back to the beginning in a strange way.

 

The decision to do an anthology of these stories makes a lot of sense – by themselves, there isn’t enough to fill in a whole feature in any of the stories, and really, I’m not sure any could have even filled out the hour that Netflix would have wanted for standalone TV episodes. But there’s more to it than that – as the films gradually build on each other, each telling an ugly tale of greed, arrogance, stupidity or weakness. The Coen’s view of humanity has always been bleak – the universe often seems to be stacked against their characters, who nevertheless, also author their own fates, and such is the case here – all these characters are doomed from the start, and still, do more to make themselves suffer. It’s telling that the Coens have never ventured outside of America to tell their stories – and often use the most American of genres to tell their stories. Here, they are making a Western and are fully embracing the clichés of the old West in many ways (I’m sure there will be some who don’t like the brother’s depiction of Native Americans in this film – which is understandable, because they are one note savages, but not understandable, as that is clearly the point and not meant to be taken literally). It’s a revisionist Western, but not in the way we have come to expect revisionist Western to be.

 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs isn’t going to win the Coen’s any new fans – if you think the brothers are smug and superior misanthropes, nothing here is going to change your mind. But it is a film that surprises in all the different ways it is able to depict America greed, violence, stupidity and self-delusion. It is a film that is very much a period piece – and very much not a period piece. While it isn’t good that the film is being released almost exclusively on Netflix – denying us a chance to see the film on a big screen, which it deserves – it is good that it’s on Netflix so we can begin watching it again and again and again right from the start. I cannot wait to revisit it.