Presented as a vivaciously visualised collection of short stories set in the Wild West, leaping off the pages of a well-worn book, the Coen brothers' new film is a pleasing tour of rolling prairies and slouching saloon towns - and the strange characters inhabiting these regions - shot through with the pair's idiosyncratic blend of comedy and tragedy.
What we get are six individual tales, introduced via coloured plate illustrations and faded back to pages from the book from which they are ostensibly taken. The tales vary in tone from the ludicrously stylised to the more naturalistic, although all share a loose bond of theme - you might say they explore the fragility and uncertainty and downright weirdness of life here on planet Earth - which, to be sure, is not new territory for the Coens.
Two of the tales are excellent, two are good, and two merely competent. I'll not say which I think are which, to let you make up your own mind.
The Gal Who Got Rattled is the most developed of the bunch, the longest, and forms the film's core. It is the story of a young woman (Zoe Kazan) taking the Oregon Trail, facing the unknown, and finding both help and danger in surprising places. While the other stories are more formally structured, mechanistically sparser yet bolder, like well-told jokes, this is the one in whose world I most wanted to spend more time. The three leads (Kazan, along with Bill Heck and Grainger Hines) are superb, and there is the feeling of much moving beneath the surface of which we only glimpse. It is a sad tale, and a rich one.
Sad also - achingly so - is Meal Ticket, in which Liam Neeson's travelling showman puts on an act with an armless and legless orator who relies wholly upon the showman for support. It is big and bold in theme, and the poor orator is played with profound grace by Harry Melling, who you probably remember best as Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter films. He mines this part for rather more pathos.
All Gold Canyon begins with an attention to the natural world that feels almost Terrence Malick-esque, albeit with the vibrancy hiked up to preternatural levels, and follows good old Tom Waits - looking decidedly old, in fact, these days, his grey and haggard face finally having caught up to his voice - playing a prospector panning for gold. The story is a simple one, but I liked its clear message about the glory of nature, and man's fussing place within it.
The opening two pieces, meanwhile - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Near Algodones - have the least depth. The former is a boisterous and gusto-filled jaunt for Coen regular Tim Blake Nelson; the latter a throwaway joke starring James Franco, who nevertheless plays the joke well.
And finally there is Mortal Remains, appropriately the last piece, in which Brendan Gleeson escorts a group of disparate travellers on a stagecoach journey where all is not as it seems. The concept isn't original, but the telling successfully adheres to the trope, hits the right beats, and works to cap off the overall movement of the film.
And that overall movement works, too. The Coens are masters at manifesting their worldview, one that relishes the strange, never fails to find the comedic, and yet refuses to shy away from the tragic - and here they are again firmly situated within that milieu, doing what they do best.
The performances are all full of life. As with Tarantino - of whose work this film in ways reminds me - the parts are so enticing, the dialogue so sumptuous, that it's any actor's dream to get even the smallest role. You have a mix here of top tier character actors, performing specific functions like session musicians, film stars helping sell the flick - your Neesons, your Gleesons, your Francos - and lesser known faces given the more naturalistic parts. All are used exactly as they should be.
The music is great, but you already knew that. The cinematography is vibrant, sweeping, majestic, if at times taking a backseat to the mechanics of the stories. The ones structured more like jokes are stories of event, and the landscapes exist only as stages upon which these events may play out. The more developed pieces, though, enjoy a greater sense of place, and feel more grounded.
In all, then, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a good anthology. Some of the stories are stronger than others, but all essentially work, and swirl and entwine together into a delightful, semi-mystical reminder of how sublimely bizarre life can truly be.
Less urgent than No Country for Old Men, less profound than Inside Llewyn Davis, less outright hilarious than The Big Lebowski, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is nevertheless a joy, the work of two wonderful storytellers having fun telling some wonderful stories. I'm glad I settled in by the campfire to listen.
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