#The ballad of buster scruggs movie

A young woman (Zoe Kazan) heads west on a wagon train to meet her husband-to-be in Oregon, only to fall in love with the wagon master (Bill Heck) en route.

The fifth story, “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” is the longest and sees the Coens wholeheartedly embrace romance, a genre they’ve rarely approached in such straightforward terms. In search of breakfast, he hastily grabs four owl eggs in a tree, only to reconsider and put three back. Although a willing participant in a world of greed, this prospector never takes more than he needs. Next up, in “All Gold Canyon,” we accompany a kooky, good-natured prospector (Tom Waits) into a picturesque river valley in search of gold. It’s a bitter commentary on art and mass consumption-a 19th-century version of selling out in the entertainment business. In the third and most melancholic segment, “Meal Ticket,” a thespian (Harry Melling) with no arms and no legs performs for a traveling showman (Liam Neeson) in exchange for food, shelter and care. In the second story-and probably the weakest of the bunch-“Near Algodones,” a bandit (James Franco) escapes a lynching after a failed bank robbery, only to have to face the gallows again for a crime he did not commit. In it, they also find inequity, incomprehensibility and true despair. ”īut the Coens, as they’ve done in works from No Country for Old Men to A Serious Man, don’t just excavate the macabre for whimsy’s sake. He then gets the whole town to join him in a hilariously upbeat call-and-response song and dance about the freshly minted corpse on the saloon floor: “Surly Joe Surly Joe Wherever he’s gambling now, I don’t know …Humankind he frowned upon, but not now his face is gone guess your frownin’ days are done, Surly Joe. Buster gets into an argument with a grunt of a man, Joe, over a game of cards and deals him a grotesque fate that would make Quentin Tarantino smile. Trouble seems to follow Buster wherever he goes, and he normally deals with it in cartoonish, violent terms, often toying with his adversaries like Bugs Bunny would Elmer Fudd. In the first of many delightfully articulated monologues to camera, he politely calls into question the use of the word “misanthrope” on his wanted poster. They begin with lighter fare, the ballad from which the film takes its name.īuster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) may be a singing cowboy with the white studs and easygoing temperament of a Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, but he also happens to be the most ruthless killer in the territory. The stories are framed as though part of a Wild West short story collection. The Coen brothers explore mythic absurdity and mortality on the Western frontier in a six-part anthology film that sees them juggling tones-from Looney Toons slapstick to bone-chilling morbidity and back again-with the veterans’ deft touch. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Annapurna Pictures, distributed by Netflix, 133 minutes, 2018, R

#The ballad of buster scruggs movie

Movie Review: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs | HistoryNet Close