The Coen Brothers Return To Westerns In Successful Fashion With The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The anthology film refers to movies that are comprised of individual, typically stand-alone, short segments instead of one grander story. Modern examples of this trend are few-and-far-between, but they've been most common in the horror genre which has produced the various V/H/S movies and The ABC's of Death. I guess the wretched 2013 abomination Movie 43 would count as an anthology movie? Easily the most high-profile modern example of this type of feature has to be the newest motion picture from Joel and Ethan Coen, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which sees the iconic duo weaving six separate stories each inhabiting the Western genre they previously explored with 2010 directorial effort True Grit. 

Though it's basically free to watch for Netflix subscribers, the Coen Brothers give one a lot of bang for their buck, if you will, by ensuring that each of the stories have their own distinct atmosphere and cover different parts of the Western genre. For instance, the opening story, which is where the title referring to the character of Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) comes from, is a typical gunslinger in the Old West yarn while the fourth segment is a prospector tale. For the record, our six stories, in order of appearance are:

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs- Buster Scruggs, a musical cowboy with the wisecracking attitude of Bugs Bunny, takes on any kind of obstacles in his way.

Near Algodones- An unnamed cowboy (James Franco) tries his hand at robbing a bank, which results in him constantly having to evade death at the hands of people like bank tellers and hangmen.

Meal Ticket- Impresario (Liam Neeson) struggles with making money off his latest sideshow act, an actor by the name of Harrison (Harry Melling) with no arms and legs.

All Gold Canyon- A prospector (Tom Waits) searches for gold in a valley. Tom Waits as a prospector is the most on-point casting I've heard in some time.

The Gal Who Got Rattled- The longest of the six tales in runtime deals with Alice (Zoe Kazan) and her plight while engaging in a long journey to a prospective suitor.

The Mortal Remains- Five strangers with distinctive personalities clash in a cramped wagon ride.

Clearly, there's lots of variety in the stories told here and the love that the two men writing and directing this movie have for the world of Westerns can be seen in how they recognize how versatile it is as a medium for storytelling in terms of both setting and tone. This level of variation is one of the best elements to this Buster Scruggs project and allows the production to feel consistently fresh from story-to-story. In fact, the only real misfire of these six tales is Near Algodones, less because it's overtly bad (how could anything with Stephen Root as a trigger-happy Western bank teller be bad?) and more because it just feels undercooked, particularly in regards to the Cowboy character, who's easily the least developed of any of the players here and is brought to life with easily the most lackluster of the movies various lead performances.

The rest of the stories, meanwhile, range from entertaining to downright masterful. Meal Ticket, for instance, has an ominous tone stemming from the selfish behavior of man that Liam Neeson handles beautifully in a mostly dialogue-free performance that, like his work in underappreciated 2016 gems Silence and A Monster Calls, reminds one of what a great dramatic performer he is. Meanwhile, The Gal Who Got Rattled makes great use of some classic Coen Brothers dialogue-based dark humor as every bit misery that can occur when one is making a long voyage across the Western landscape transpires for poor Alice. It's a role that Zoe Kazan flourishes in, particularly in her dialogue delivery of the various grimly humorous lines she has to deliver throughout this tale.

All Gold Canyon is a simple story, but why not keep things simple when you've got Tom Waits yelling at pockets of gold in the ground that have yet to be discovered? That right there is already plenty to keep me entertained! But the two best stories for my money have to be both the opening and closing segments, the latter getting some excellent performances out of Brendan Gleeson and Jonjo O'Neill, the former being especially humorous at depicting his characters soft-spoken pride at how good he is at his job. There are also some lovely visual choices to be found here in the cinematography and production design, namely the imaginative color choices that lend this story a distinct visual sensibility among its brethren.

Even outside of this segment of course, the vast majority of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, aside from some distractingly poor CGI used to bring gruesome injuries, like blown off fingers, to life, is a visual treat and that includes the opening segment which, above all else, reminds one that Tim Blake Nelson is the real deal as an entertaining actor, he's hysterical as a meta-cowboy who loves blowing off people's heads almost as much as he loves belting out tunes. Happily, the various songs Scruggs croons are actually pretty great songs in their own right, particularly in their cleverly written lyrics, I could totally imagine hearing any of them playing on a Classic Country Music radio station and fitting in like a cow at a dairy farm. 

Despite the Buster Scruggs story being such a hysterically zany segment, it ends on a surprisingly effective note of melancholy contemplativeness (aided mightily in its execution by Nelson's delivery of his final few lines) that proves to be the most emotionally affecting note of the whole enterprise. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs covers a whole lot of different emotional terrain within just its various individual stories, let alone when considering the entire film as a whole and such an expansive quality turns out to be one of its best features. Anthology films are a rare breed in the modern American cinema landscape but The Ballad of Buster Scruggs makes a great case for why they should be a more prominent fixture in said landscape.