Review: The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Upon first glance, one might believe that "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," which started as a miniseries before being released in anthology film form via Netflix, is a Coen Brothers lark - more of a "Hail, Caesar!," which I thought was great by the way, than one of the duo's darker, more serious pictures.

And while viewing the film's first of six stories, the titular tale of a singing gunslinger, it's easy to be led astray due to that story's wacky aura and believe that "Buster Scruggs" is going to be one of the Coens' lighter affairs. It's not until the sixth and final story that one realizes there has been a consistent theme all along. In that final, enigmatic chapter, a character spells out a lesson that the titular character in the first chapter failed to learn: "We each have a life that is our own. We must spin our own wheel and play our own hand."

In the first story, Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) is a cheerful sociopath who sings - and shoots - his way through the Old West. This chapter is easily the most comedic, but also the bloodiest. It's the tale of an iconic outlaw who learns that being such a figure can only last so long. The second story, "Near Algodones," is one in which the Coens go heavy on the irony as James Franco's hapless bank robber nearly escapes a hanging following a robbery, only to find himself in another rotten situation due to bad luck.

"Meal Ticket," the film's third story, is the darkest and bleakest of the bunch. Liam Neeson plays a hard drinking traveling showman who lugs around an armless, legless young man (Harry Melling), who performs soliloquies and famous speeches, kicking off each performance with Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias": "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair." The film takes a brief comedic turn when Neeson's character witnesses another performer - of the avian persuasion - that draws larger crowds, but quickly becomes grim when he is faced with a ruthless business decision.

The fourth episode, "All Gold Canyon," is an oddly cheerful - well, mostly - tale of a prospector (Tom Waits, who has shockingly never worked with the Coens before) searching for gold, and whose excitement appears to revolve around the process itself, rather than the accumulation of the object he seeks.

The fifth episode is the longest - and saddest. "The Gal Who Got Rattled" tells the story of a young woman (a terrific Zoe Kazan) and her ailing brother who are seeking a new life by following the Oregon Trail. After her brother dies, the kindly leader of the caravan (Bill Heck) proposes a solution to her woes. Without going into much detail, this story starts with a hilarious dinner table conversation, involves a surprisingly potent romance, makes the best use of an animal since "Inside Llewyn Davis" and, ultimately, culminates with a shootout and a tragedy.

The final episode, "The Mortal Remains," is an enigmatic coda that involves two bounty hunters (Brendan Gleeson and Jongo O'Neill) traveling in a stagecoach with a frumpy older woman, a Frenchman and a kooky trapper. O'Neill's character discusses how he often lures his victims with a story, while Gleeson's character "thumps" them, and how he enjoys looking into men's eyes to see how they negotiate the border of life and death. Upon being asked if any of the victims were able to do such a thing, he responds, "I don't know. I'm only watching."

Although this final segment is one of the shortest and is light on story, it is also the chapter that ties all of the others together. O'Neill tells the stagecoach passengers that people like stories, and that most of the ones people hear include elements to which they can relate, but at the same time are not really about them. When one of the characters appears to be having some sort of physical ailment, the characters in the stagecoach call for the coachman to stop, but the coach - much like life itself - must continue to move forward.

Each of the characters in the film's six stories face uncertainty - and as one character indicates, the only certainty that everyone, including several characters in the picture, faces is death. The only thing one can do is play the cards that one is dealt. This includes Buster Scruggs, who tries to back out of a card game after literally being dealt a bad hand, but it also applies to Franco's bank robber, Neeson's unscrupulous showman, Waits' prospector, the caravan of characters heading to Oregon and the stagecoach passengers.

"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is a gorgeously shot picture - in fact, I'd say it's one of the Coens' most visual films to date - with a remarkable attention to period detail. One might argue that, tonally, it's a little all over the map, but I'm not sure I'd agree. As usual, the Coens' mordant humor is on display, but the manner in which the stories are presented - two violent but comedic ones first, an unbearably dark one third, a fourth that defies tone altogether, a heartbreaking fifth entry and a mysterious finale that exists in the same universe as "A Serious Man" - makes the case that the film is anything but a hodgepodge.

In typical Coen fashion, the brothers set expectations early on, only to defy them again and again. In other words, this is a film that sneaks up on you and forces you to rethink its structure and concepts long after the viewing experience is over. It's one of the best movies I've seen this year and further proof that the Coens can take any setup - in this case, the anthology - and make it fascinating.