The
Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018): Written and directed
by Joel and Ethan Coen. Starring: Tim Blake Nelson, James
Franco, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Zoe Kazan, Liam Neeson, and Tom Waits, but
sadly, neither John Goodman nor Josh Brolin.
Running Time: 133
minutes. Based on the absurdist cowboy
fantasies of the Coens’ hivemind collective.
Rating:
3/4
Part
of what makes the Coen Brothers such uniquely excellent and special filmmakers
is their seeming inability to produce a movie that can be easilt dismissed from
the mind. Even their “lesser” works- and
by “lesser,” I mean “Ok, it’s no Fargo,
but it’s still better than most of this year’s other films”- contain something
unforgettable, something that indelibly stays with you and doesn’t let you
forget that you just saw a Coen Brothers film.
It could be a sequence of scenes, bits of dialogue, a particular
performance, or even as simple as the Bear Man from True Grit, or the quiet desperation of Ralph Fiennes in Hail, Ceasar! There is always a particular pleasure for a
movie lover in watching the work of people who thoroughly know their craft
inside and out, are willing to go the extra mile in molding together every last
detail, and who don’t particularly care to hold your hand and explain in detail
the wanderings of their strange minds.
And
thus we return to the Wide, Wide West, a setting that the Coens have seemingly
returned to several times over the course of their careers, each time producing
something considerably different from what came before. This time around, we are treated to an
anthology series, a set of six short films united by nothing more than the
literal storybook they are read to us from and the fact that each one is
preoccupied with death in some manner, be it comic, tragic, meaningful,
senseless, or something else altogether.
We
start with the titular story of Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) a wanted
“misanthrope” who insists that all he wants is a fair game of poker and to not
be contradicted. And by “contradicted,”
he means, “one cross word to me and I will literally shoot you to pieces.” This whole first segment by itself ranks as
one of the strangest and most jarring mashups of comedic tone and on-screen
brutality the Coens have created in a career FULL of jarring tonal
mashups. Are we supposed to be
laughing? Are we supposed to hate
Scruggs for being a sociopathic murderer?
Neither are easy reactions, and the film doesn’t much care to help us
choose.
The
rest of the movie doesn’t try to make any more sense, although the crass
nihilism of the first few parts slowly give way in the second half to something
slightly more sympathetic to us humans and our pitiful plights on this
Earth. From Scruggs, we first see the
pathetic haplessness of James Franco’s would-be bank robber, and then the
vulture-and-prey-like relationship between Liam Neeson as a traveling showman
and his “show,” a legless and armless orator played by a staggeringly good
Harry Melling. From there we watch as
Tom Waits plays a prospector despoiling a piece of untouched land in search of
that most base of human desires; gold.
This is followed by the endless struggles of a lonely woman left
abandoned and penniless in the middle of a great caravan to Oregon, and concludes
in a stagecoach, where the meanings of life and death are discussed by a
hodgepodge of peoples representing various life philosophies.
Something
that struck me repeatedly while watching this movie was the contrast between
the vast, beautiful expanse of the landscapes, the infinite stretch of the
natural earth, and the absolute smallness of petty human fairs in comparison,
preventing us from seeing the light around us.
Tom Waits’ section as the prospector is perhaps the most explicit part
of the film in this regard; he comes across a valley of simply stunning color
and variety of plant and animal life, a place “untouched by man,” but all he is
there to do is literally stick his face in the mud, sifting out tiny flecks of
a metal compound that human markets place a high price on. The scene begins and ends with the presence
of a large, antlered deer, seemingly a symbol of the ability of nature to
return in site of our best efforts.
This
is a stunningly shot film (Bruno Delbonnel did the cinematography),
overwhelming in its presentation of the size of the world, matched by an
excellent score from longtime Coen veteran Carter Burwell. Even the small details stick with you; I will
never forget the image of Tim Blake Nelson patting himself down after entering
a tavern, leaving behind a cloud of starch in the exact shape of his body,
Looney-Toons-style. It’s the sort of
cartoon-translated-directly-into-reality stylism that very few filmmakers can
pull off, with the Coens and Wes Anderson being among the exceptions.
Mileage
with each of the segments may vary per viewer, and the degree to which the
whole affair comes together will likely divide viewers. There’s something here for everyone to enjoy,
but I personally had a hard time coming to grips with the bleak despair that
grips many of the segments. True, the
Coens are rather famous for poking the mind into contemplation of the
potentially very empty nature of existence, but their better works are more
creative and genuinely thought-provoking that Buster Scruggs manages to be, or at least the first part is; I do
feel the second half is eminently stronger in its setups and payoffs.
This
is not to detract from the strength of the film as a whole- though it will
never make my upper ranks of their filmography, Buster Scruggs is another expertly-crafted and memorable work by
one of the greatest filmmaking duos in cinematic history. It is a must-see for any fans of their style,
and for anyone hankering for a fresh spin on the Western.
-Noah Franc
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