The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
One of the best written movies of the year also turns out to be one of the most entertaining
The awards season is almost upon us and hence we are likely to see a flurry of highly anticipated movies releasing one after the other. While I haven’t been able to catch up with most of them, I got a chance to watch Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Before I talk about the movie, some facts which made the movie interesting even before it got released. The film was originally intended to be a six-part TV series before the Coens changed their mind and stuck with their guns. The film is based on Western-themed short stories written by the Coens over a period of 20 to 25 years. Also, this is their first film shot in digital. It’s always challenging to make Western’s through the digital medium, but with the likes of upcoming directors like Taylor Sheridan, there seems to be a nice field set up now.
Coming to the movie, all the stories have been pieced together beautifully, switching from picturesque moments to gritty fights with elegance. The movie is told through the eyes of a person going through an old storybook, going through the stories page by page, giving just enough time to read some of it — to tell us something more, something that happens after the story ends on screen. Tim Blake Nelson starts off the first of the six stories, named after his character Buster Scruggs, an eccentric outlaw gunslinger, singing cheerfully no matter what happens around him. The crazy extreme close-up shots and shootouts reminded me of Tarantino’s Django Unchained — a classic spaghetti Western with a mix of magical realism and violence .Coens show us a shot of the inside of his guitar, looking out through the hole, as if it was narrowing the perspective. The sociopathic nature of the character complements the comic side of him so well that I was laughing out loud within the first few minutes into the movie. The second story features James Franco as a bank robber who gets lucky the first time he is sentenced to death , but finds himself in a similar situation again. I feel like this whole storyline was written just for that single punchline in the end and deservedly so, because it was worth it. The third and most disturbing one is called the Meal Ticket starring Liam Neeson, who travels with a man with no arms and legs, diligently feeding and carrying him around as the man recites classics such as Shelley’s Ozymandias, the biblical Cain and Abel, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Neeson collects money from the audience at the end of each performance, receiving less and less as they visit increasingly remote mountain towns with smaller and more indifferent audiences. The colour palette is kept pitch dark inline with the theme of the story. The climax is at its best — brutal and unforgiving; as is the world. It is here, in this O. Henry styled story, that the Coens find their true voice ,which is much more dark, and satisfying, than comedy.
The fourth one, All Gold Canyon, based on a short story by Jack London , is probably the weakest, even though it’s the best shot of all. The lead , an old man looking for gold, represents the 19th century self made American with dreams of conquering the world with his will power and hard work. I’d recommend this only for the production quality, as the Coens combine some magnificent locations with equally good visual effects, reminding me of the wonderful Inside Llewyn Davis. The fourth and longest, since it had the most substance, is The Gal Who Got Rattled , starring Zoe Kazan. It follows a young woman travelling across Oregon, who meets a humble young man and falls in love with him. It also features a battle with a local tribe of Native Americans, with a wonderful curveball to it. The battle scene is the field of prairie dogs, who have dug up holes all over, increasing the chaos of the situation. This short was definitely the most moving one, thanks to Zoe Kazan, with one of her best performances on screen.
Coens save the best for the last as we land in a Tarantino style climax(reminded me of Hateful Eight), called The Mortal Remains. Jonjo O’Neil just steals the show with a ghoulish Englishman in a stagecoach travelling with four other strangers, also carrying a bounty corpse. The characters start sharing stories about their lives , which are nothing but different schools of philosophical thought and belief. The trapper rambles about how people are all pretty much alike in their animal needs and desires. Mrs. Betjeman, a devout Christian, comes from a Western school of thought, claiming there are two kinds of people, upright and sinning. René challenges her religious dichotomy and the trapper’s animalism ,suggesting that each person is a unique and complex product of subjective experiences, so that humans can never fully know each other. As the driver who never stops hurtles the coach through the darkness, O’Neil entertains his fellow passengers with a creepy tale, sort of a coda which brings all the other tales together in a somber and unsettling manner. As the grim reaper transports his passengers, we wonder about the significance of the whole ordeal involving the bounty hunters and their tales. The music is consistently good throughout the film and is at its best as the credits roll in and we reach the final page in the old book.
What works for Coens in this movie is that they don’t find the need to conform themselves to develop a single character to address all the motifs. Instead, they use multiple stories to build a richer and more diverse picture of the west that most other movies can’t. The Coens have written a seamless set of disturbing as well as enjoyable stories from the old west, where every forehead gets a bullet, often not satisfying but always leaving an unsettling feel.
