The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

I MEAN, sure – given that February is Oscar month and all, I could have chosen to write about Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma.” I could have highlighted the significance of Yalitza Aparicio’s Oscar nomination, or my reasons for believing why her co-star, Marina de Tavira, will beat out the frontrunners to win Best Supporting Actress. However, instead of celebrating “Roma” (though I do love the film), I will be drawing your attention to another movie that is quite brilliant in its own right and, yet, has managed to fly under the radar by not gaining as much momentum as Cuaron’s film during awards season. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” like “Roma” is distributed by Netflix and even though the former has only been nominated for three Academy Awards this year (as compared to the latter, which has earned 10 nominations), there is still a lot to love in “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” which was written and directed by the Academy Award-winning duo of Joel and Ethan Cohen.

The film is an anthology film – meaning that it is comprised of several stories that are not directly related to each other, but, rather, share similar themes, as well as the setting of the American frontier. The six shorts that make up the complete film, star a wide array of established and unknown actors, and also fluctuate in tone and mood ranging from the comic to the sorrowful. It is a wild ride, overall, but an enjoyable one that presents new stories in the format of the Western, which is a movie genre that highlights a certain bygone era and, therefore, to observe the Cohens’ repackaging of this form for the current generation of moviegoers is illuminating, fascinating, and entertaining.

The first story is the one that gives the film its name. It is the tale of the Buster Scruggs (played to perfection by Tim Blake Nelson), who is an extremely upbeat, singing cowboy whose positive personality is only contrasted by his remarkable skills at killing people.

However, the juxtaposition of his charm with his gun-slinging fits right in with the known lore of the Wild West, as, rather than being some sort of creepy sadist, Buster Scruggs comes across as an immensely likeable, folksong-singing hero. His role is reminiscent of many other figures from myth and legend – such as Anansi and Robin Hood – whose attraction and likability has always managed to overshadow the devious, immoral, mischievous, or morally ambiguous aspects of such characters.

The second story, called “Near Algodones,” stars James Franco, as a man who tries to rob a bank. Franco’s character, like Buster Scruggs before him, is another of the smirking, winking, swashbuckling figures that seem to have walked right out of the frontier’s lore.

The difference between Franco’s Cowboy and Nelson’s Buster Scruggs is that Scruggs is a killing-machine, whereas the Cowboy laughably comes across as a man trying to do something out of his league by trying to rob the bank. The comedy only gets better in this one, as the Cowboy is chased away and then overpowered by the elderly bank teller who wears a wild, cacophonous array of pots and pans as a shield against the Cowboy’s bullets – and the scene in the film is as absurd as it sounds written here, but its absurdity only enhances both entertainment factor and the weirdness of life on the prairie.

“Meal Ticket” is darker in tone than the previous two shorts as it tells the story of two travelling men who rely on each other for their livelihood in very different ways. Liam Neeson appears as a travelling impresario whose main source of income comes from what is earned at the shows he arranges on his travels, where his companion, an armless and legless orator (played tenderly by Harry Melling) recites famous speeches and poems. The orator, because of his limited ability to move, relies on the impresario to carry him from place to place and to even feed him his food. Their relationship is mutualistic, each benefitting the other in some way that is more than having to do with business and finances. The entirety of their relationship is unclear, the backstory is foggy, and their feelings for each other is even foggier, fluctuating between affection, resentment, and resigned dependence. Yet, despite the ambiguity of all this, this particular story still manages to retain a kernel of strong, hard emotion at its centre. We feel for these two characters and their circumstances, eking out a living in the harsh, cold world of the frontier.

“All Gold Canyon” is one of my favourite stories from the six. Tom Waits (better known for his singing) is an old, grizzled, grandfatherly prospector searching for gold in a beautiful valley filled with lush scenery, a merry stream, and random animals. The setting for this story is truly spectacular. The story is really a one-man show, and the audience watches the prospector toil day after day, digging mound of dirt after mound of dirt, working

tirelessly to find the gold. This may seem like a tedious exercise for the audience to engage with, but Waits fills his character with such bounteous joy and perseverance that we feel we are there working alongside him and we want to find the gold as much as he wants to. When he finally does, his joy is infectious. When misfortune befalls him and he seems to lose everything he has worked so hard for, we too are hurt and angry. In the end, this particular tale thankfully turns out to be one of the happiest of the lot and serves as a strong reminder of the remarkable acting skills of the brilliant Tom Waits.

Zoe Kazan in “The Gal Who Got Rattled” is a young woman named Alice, who ends up travelling by herself, after her brother dies while a part of a wagon train, on her way to the site where she will meet the man that her brother has promised her to. After her brother’s death, Alice becomes close with the handsome but slightly brooding leader of the wagon train, Billy, and most of the story is spent building the relationship between Alice and Billy.

Theirs is a slow and delicate awakening towards each other, and this is what makes it all the more special. Alice realises that in Billy she can marry on her own terms, to a man who can provide for her, while Billy begins to understand that he is not meant for life forever on the prairie and that he can settle down with Alice. However, a short while after Billy proposes, Alice becomes separated from the train and is embroiled in an attack led by a band of Native Americans. The final scene is a harrowing, dramatic, and sorrowful closure to one of the strongest of all the tales in the film.

I personally did not find the final tale of the six, entitled “The Mortal Remains,” to be up to par with the others, despite the promising premise. Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Jonjo O’Neil, Saul Rubinek, and Chelcie Ross star as a mixed bag of strangers sharing a stagecoach as they hurtle towards a mysterious hotel, with a corpse tied to the roof of the coach. The motley group engages in various conversations that impart themes as diverse as language, death, love, and class – and yet, it is this sort of bouncing around within the confined space of the stagecoach without settling on something major that throws this story off for me. Maybe there’s some sort of irony in “The Mortal Remains,” but whatever it is, is certainly lost on me – and in any case, despite this particular letdown, there was still lots more to enjoy in “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” as the first five stories are all fine representatives of modern cinema speaking of a bygone era.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
All our printed editions are available online
emblem3
Subscribe to the Guyana Chronicle.
Sign up to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.