The latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen has arrived and it is truly special. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an old-West set series of vignettes that are simultaneously haunting, romantic, hilarious and purely classic Coen.
The Coen brothers also penned the screenplay, with two of the stories adapted from other material—specifically Jack London’s All Gold Canyon and the most inspired of the short stories, The Gal Who Rattled by Stewart Edward White. There’s a congruency to the film as a whole that is utterly fascinating. These stories are not interconnected, yet they share a landscape of the Old West and the filmmakers and as such, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs works brilliantly. Initially, there was talk that these vignettes would work as a series (such as a limited television program).
Thankfully, the Coens changed their minds and packaged the group as a singular cinematic experience.
The first story focuses on the titular character,played by a Coen returning player—O Brother, Where Art Thou’s Tim Blake Nelson. He saunters into the film, riding his trusty horse and singing in a manner that recalls Hank Williams of all people!
As he makes his way into an isolated saloon, he is dressed in head-to-toe white. Given that this establishment only serves alcohol to outlaws—he is not offered any booze. In fact, Scruggs is quite the outlaw as a wanted man. This moment is emblematic of the entire Coen brothers film. So much of the strength of this western is that what you see is not necessarily what you get. The filmmakers keep you guessing and just when you think they are going to go one way, they turn your expectations on its head—to our utter delight.
There are six stories, all total, and each grabs us emotionally more powerfully than the previous… until the last one which is probably the weakest of the lot. The strongest, most powerful, and the story that will elicit the most emotive reaction is The Gal Who Got Rattled. Zoe Kazan (The Big Sick) stars as a woman who is moving west with her brother. He has the promise of a business opportunity with a cohort who has also offered to marry his sister. With little prospects and little going on in her life back east, she heads west with a caravan full of immigrants seeking a better life on the frontier.
What is so magical about this segment is that yes, there is romance, but the Coens know enough about the hardships of the old west that even the idea of amore only goes so far before the reality of what settlers experienced in our nation’s westward expansion settles in. It’s a powerful vignette and my personal favorite of the sextet. Bill Heck compels as, Billy Knapp, the co-leader of this westward jaunt. His scenes with Kazan’s Alice Longabaugh are touching, endearing and above all else, about as touching of a male-female interaction of this time period with this rough and tumble backdrop as I’ve seen in sometime. It’s magical.
Speaking of magic, Tom Waits is the most unique of actors. Giving him an entire segment, essentially to himself, is a stroke of genius. If there’s anyone who can pull off a man of his age of that time, it is Waits. His All Gold Canyon is just as it sounds. He is a prospector, searching for just a few gold nuggets that would make his day, month, year and if he’s really lucky—life. As this is a Coen brothers film, nothing goes as expected and I would not want it any other way.
Waits has never been better as an actor and he basks in the glow that is his Prospector(seriously, that’s his moniker in the movie!) that just pops off the screen every single millisecond that he possesses. Of all the characters in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and there are many, his is the most indelible. There is much in these six tales that will stick to the soul for the foreseeable future, but none more so than the riveting Waits’ turn.
Who else, except these moviemaking brothers, could get the star power that The Ballad of Buster Scruggs possesses? James Franco stars in one of the shorter vignettes as a bank robber whose heist scene in the remote establishment is just priceless.Stephen Root (a Coen brothers veteran) and Franco go tête-à-tête in the most endearing/vicious of ways. Root’s Teller is not going to give Franco’s Cowboy what he wants without a fight. Given that Cowboy has a gun drawn on him and Teller appears to be weaponless, how this scene progresses is ripe with electricity.Also amping up the star power is Tyne Daly, Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, Jonjo O’Neill and Chelcie Ross.
The Coens have really outdone themselves with their latest. I can see how this entire endeavor was born. A supreme challenge, for a pair of storytellers who have done almost everything, must be hard to come by.They clearly were inspired by the serials of old and sought to carve out something uniquely Coens that is hardly seen these days (and even recent days for that matter). The western serial used to be a staple of the movie-going experience. Heck serials of all genres were! Seeking to capture the power of that dated storytelling method, while putting their unique stamp on it, they dove into this project and the winners are audiences everywhere.
Grade: A