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Six Short Films About the Old West


I’m as surprised as you are that The Ballad of Buster Scruggs works. That an anthology film of six different western stories, each embodying a different kind of western motif, only tied together through a very unimaginative book framing device, actually makes for a cohesive, consistently intriguing and really good movie. But then again, this is a movie from Joel and Ethan Coen, who even in their bad films, are never dull. With this movie they return to short-form storytelling after contributing brief segments to Paris, je t’aime and To Each His Own Cinema, and though some of the stories here are better than others, they all bear the Coen signature in one way or another.
The first title story is a darkly comic take on musical westerns, with Tim Blake Nelson doing his best Gene Autry/Roy Rogers impression as a cheerful misanthrope and fast gunman. “Near Algodones” follows the strange fortunes of a prairie bank robber (James Franco). “Meal Ticket” is a quiet, melancholy parable of a travelling impresario (Liam Neeson) and his limbless artist (Harry Melling). “All Gold Canyon”, based on the Jack London story, is about a lonesome old prospector (Tom Waits) digging for gold in a Colorado valley. “The Gal Who Got Rattled” is the tale of a woman (Zoe Kazan) bereft of money and prospects on a wagon train to Oregon. And “The Mortal Remains” is a cryptic stagecoach-set piece following five very different passengers (Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Jonjo O’Neill, Saul Rubinek, and Chelcie Ross) en route to Fort Morgan.
The movie really achieves its conceit of feeling like reading a collection of short stories, which is essentially what the episodes are: stories written by the Coens around the theme of the Old West over the last couple decades while they were making other movies. But they’re not just Western-themed stories, otherwise they’d be hardly interesting. Rather each examines a different facet of the frontier or western iconography, and each seems to be experimenting in a different western subgenre. While “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” has the rhythm and touchstones of the classical formula tales, “Near Algodones” resembles to some degree the same sensibility of the Coens’ True Grit, and “Meal Ticket” with its wintry atmosphere, naturalism, and visual storytelling looks like something in the revisionist vein of McCabe & Mrs. Miller. “All Gold Canyon” has minimalist stakes but the look of a John Ford film, “The Gal Who Got Rattled” spends a lot of time aspiring to the wagon train romance of something like Stagecoach or How the West Was Won, and “The Mortal Remains” suggests elements of the ‘weird west’ style. This shifting of type between stories keeps the film from feeling monotonous and allows it to surprise you.
Inhabiting these various tales and lending credence and considerable talent is a marvellous ensemble of performers. All those you expect to be great -Tom Waits, Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, Tyne Daly, and Zoe Kazan- are, and Tim Blake Nelson most certainly leaves a unique impression with his bizarre title character. But the true stand-out may well be Harry Melling, who audiences of my generation would remember as Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter series. You’d be hard pressed to find a more sympathetic character in the film, and Melling plays the part with incredible pathos and subtlety, even while his dialogue exclusively consists of reciting the likes of “Ozymandias”, The Tempest, and the Gettysburg Address. In addition to Melling, lesser known stage luminaries Jonjo O’Neill and Chelcie Ross, as well as Saul Rubinek, are exceptional scene stealers throughout the last story, and the supporting cast boasts Willie Watson, Clancy Brown, Stephen Root, Bill Heck, and Grainger Hines.
The filmmakers’ distinctive dialogue is all over this movie of course (leave it to the Coen Brothers to bring “misanthrope” back into the lexicon), but the attention to detail is just as remarkable. Everything from the dialect and vocabulary to the social graces to the minutia on gold digging, travelling shows, and wagon train lifestyles feels very authentic. Enhancing this immersion is Carter Burwell’s score and the vast, natural beauty shot by Bruno Delbonnel in place of the Coens’ usual cinematographer Roger Deakins. The directing is quite versatile too, with the Coens utilizing their established range to give each story its own feel and language.
This isn’t to say however, that each story is on equal terms. The second and fifth are notably weaker than the others, and the first is really trying to be smart a lot of the time. It still works fine but it does come across more like it’s imitating a Coen Brothers movie rather than being one.
But then again, it’s been so long since we’ve had a halfway decent anthology film, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is not only a good one, but the Coen Brothers’ best film since Inside Llewyn Davis (which may not sound like much since Hail Caesar! was their only movie between the two, but it’s also better than the projects they’ve just written since then as well). It’s irreverent and charming, unconventional and funny, provocative and darkly poignant, and stands out distinctly from this duos’ other films; yes, I think it can be said the Coen Brothers are back on form.

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