The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Review

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a 2018 American western anthology film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, starring Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Harry Melling, Tom Waits, Bill Heck, Zoe Kazan, Brendan Gleeson, and Jonjo O’Neill. The film follows 6 different vignettes that take place in the American west exploring themes of death, fate, and nature both of man and the physical world in a comedic, tragic, and bittersweet way. The stories follow a singing cowboy (Nelson), a bank robber (Franco), a travelling actor and his caretaker (Melling and Neeson), an aging prospector (Waits), a maiden on a wagon train accompanied by a handsome young cowboy (Kazan and Heck), and a pair of undertakers transporting a body (Gleeson and O’Neill)

This review will be structed slightly differently, in which I will review each individual vignette as an individual short, then briefly discuss the film as a whole, as the shorts range wildly with tone and topical subject. The films to me speak on a topical sense of man wrestling with basic human emotions, such as greed. In at least 3 shorts, the characters are driven by greed in the form of money, in one by passion, in one by opportunity, and in another seemingly by the desire to demonstrate pride, but I believe the themes of each individual story are so encompassing and demonstrative of human life and grappling with randomness in the universe that they are worth discussing separately.

The first short is entitled “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”, and it follows a cartoonish gunslinger bearing the titular name, played by Tim Blake Nelson. The short opens with Scruggs singing a melody about needing water. As the song comes to a close, Scruggs starts speaking directly at the camera, completely breaking the fourth wall by introducing himself and telling the audience of a bar nearby wanting to play cards. Scruggs then enters a cantina where he shoots every outlaw upon them taunting him for being silly. Leaving behind that bar, Scruggs ventures into the next town over where he encounters another bar in which he begins to play a game of poker. Scruggs sees his cards at the table and immediately decides to quit, which angers the men around the table. One especially surly man pulls a gun on Scruggs and threatens to kill him, to which Scruggs kicks up a board on the wooden table, swinging the gun back towards the man and making him shoot himself in a hilarious death. Scruggs begins singing a song about the man’s demise and the shooters brother enters the saloon, demanding a duel with Scruggs for revenge. The duel ends almost immediately as Scruggs shoots off all the man’s fingers, then turns around, reveals a mirror, and shoots him without looking. As soon as Scruggs wins the duel, another man shows up wearing all black, contrasting with Scruggs’ white outfit, playing the harmonica, challenging Scruggs to another duel. The black suited man immediately kills Scruggs. Scruggs’ angel rises from his body and sings a duet with the black suited man, a song entitled “when a cowboy trades his spurs for wings”

The short fabulously establishes the darkly comedic tone for the rest of the film. From the extensive vocabulary possessed by Scruggs to the cartoonish special effects such as CGI angel wings, a cloud of dust left by Scruggs upon entering the first cantina, and the bullet holes in certain characters from which a comedic beam of light shines through. The film grapples with the man versus passion in a way, as Scruggs’ pride of being the best singer and gunslinger in the west leads to predicaments purely meant to show off, but it’s all for show, and in the end, he gets killed by just another kid, or as he puts it “another young man with something to prove”, as though Scruggs himself isn’t just looking for something to prove. The technical aspects of this short are impeccable, between fabulously detailed sets, character revealing costumes, and classic Joel and Ethan Coen cinematography, muted in color but rich in meaning. The short parades its sense of self and unique identity proudly on its shoulder, a short that’s not ashamed to be wildly creative but nevertheless always retaining human sentiment. The merits of this short fall entirely on the writing and the technical aspects, as the story is unique and worthwhile, but many characters lack exactly that- a character. This is an understandable flaw, as most characters in this particular short don’t stick around long enough for us as audience members to become well acquainted with them. Even so, the caricatures that fill the screen makes the whole story seem as though it were covered in loose dirt and dust, giving it that old western grit.

The second story, called “Near Algodones”, offers a much different experience in terms of story, but only deviating slightly in tone. This film follows a robber played by James Franco as enters a solitary bank in the middle of nowhere and attempts to rob it, only to find that that the teller is much better prepared than anticipated. The teller escapes out the back and creates a suit of armor made of pots and pans. The teller knocks out the robber and hands him over to the local police, who have him hanged. The noose is affixed to a large tree and the robber is sat on a horse, who they intend to scary away, subsequently killing him, but instead a group on Indians arrive, murdering the cowboys and leaving the robber alone. the robber gets saved by a local herder and is later found by the police and is convicted of robbing horses and is put in the gallows once more. Next to him there is a man in tears, to whom he asks, “first time?”. The robber looks out onto the crowd surrounding the gallows and sees a beautiful young woman. They share a moment of looking at one another before a bag is placed over the robbers head and he is hung to death.

I take this opportunity to let you in on a little piece of advice when it comes to watching this film, which is that it is unwise to get too attached to any given character, especially main characters, as they often die. The deaths however, come in a comedic moment which makes them all seem bittersweet but still deserved. This film is a shorter one, and among the worse ones, but it still holds up as an individual film. The main complaints with this is the very flimsy premise on which this relies upon, which feels as though someone had the idea for that one line which I mentioned (first time?) and the rest of the film was built to have that idea. The films technical aspects are among the best in this whole anthology, and the individual lines are equally shining. I will later discuss a short entitled “The Mortal Remains” which is the best written and the best acted of these shorts, but the worst shot. This film is in direct contrast, as I believe it to be the worst shot and maybe the second worst acted, but the technical prowess and raw emotion in the shots contrasted with the heart wrenching lines beautifully encapsulate this films ideology on the comedic nature and bittersweet humor of death, as just as the main character is to die, he sees a beautiful woman, wearing blue in a crowd of black, which in a way is what Near Algodones feels like, a bit of blue among the black

The third short, “Meal Ticket”, is the beginning of the more cynical turn that this anthology takes, as it is the most depressing of the shorts, and feels oddly out of place being number 3. The film follows an armless legless actor and his impresario, the actor played by Harry Melling and the impresario played by Liam Neeson. The film features little to no acting besides that of the actor. The film opens on the duo setting up their travelling performance, a wagon that converts into a stage in which the disabled actor reads various monologues and poems, scriptures and passages. The show is shown to be successful in its inception, quickly losing its popularity over time. We see the burden that the actor is on the impresario, as he has to feed him and bathe him, hold him while he urinates, and do other menial tasks. One night on a drunken spree, the impresario takes the actor into town while he gets a prostitute, and the actor is forced to stand with his back to them in the same room, looking off with an empty look. One night, after an unsuccessful performance, the impresario goes into town and sees a wildly successful show of a chicken who can do math, as people scream out mathematical equations and the chicken pecks at the correct number in a row of numbers. The impresario busy the chicken, and after a few days, is shown tossing a large rock into a ravine to see how it sinks or floats. He looks at the actor, walks over to him, and the scene fades to black. On the next shot of the impresarios wagon, in the actors spot sits a bag of chicken feed.

“Meal Ticket” is an anomaly in this anthology, as it gives off a cold energy, as if the film were frozen over, which is fitting as it has the coldest characters and the darkest sense of humor. The ideas of death surrounding “Meal Ticket” are less about inconsequentiality, but an idea that parallels with it, which is replaceability, in the sense that no one is truly special in the west. Short of “The Mortal Remains”, I believe this is the deepest film, in terms of its ideas and themes. The films portrayal of nature’s cynicism through Neeson’s indiscernible expression and Melling’s cold stare gives the film a sense of knowledge and understanding of human nature that most people themselves would never achieve. It is unique that this film takes place in the time period of the west, but it is not in any desert, but instead a snowy landscape, as though to cover up the characters intentions. The films cinematography is almost entirely locked down, immobile, as if the camera itself were frozen over, and although there is little “original writing” as almost every line given in this film is by the actor as he recounts old stories and poem, the selection of stories both foreshadow and encapsulate the films messages so well that they deserve credit on their own. The plotting of the film, although simple, takes its time to break the emotion out of you, and it feels like watching a factory operate, with its stark landscape and enigmatic expressions on both the land and its inhabitants. The films editing is wonderful, keeping a high paced slow burn that digs so deep into the psyche of the audience and implants paranoia and anxiety that keeps the films embers glowing and red hot. The performances are excellent, and the writing is outstanding, the only flaw of this film is its placement in the anthology, which soaks out a bit of the emotional impact, as it is directly followed by “All Gold Canyon”

“All Gold Canyon” is the fourth film in this anthology, and it follows an elderly gold miner played by Tom Waits as he tries to find a pocket of gold he dubs “Mr. Pocket”. The film opens on the canyons natural setting, with deer and animals roaming about, all of which scatter upon the arrival of the prospector. The man starts digging a large hole on the bank of a stream. In his initial hole, the man finds small scraps of gold, and begins digging various holes around the bank, trying to find which has the most gold. By the end of the day he has a row of about 10 holes across the bank and he proclaims about how he’s going to find the pocket of gold. The prospector sleeps and spends some of the next morning finding breakfast before making another series of holes, this time moving away from the bank of the river, once again analyzing how many scraps of gold are abound in each hole. As the holes end up making a pyramid shape, he finds the spot where the pocket would be and begins to dig endlessly, spending all day digging. He once again falls asleep after yelling how he’s going to find the pocket tomorrow. After digging for a few more hours, the prospector happens upon a small nugget of gold. He digs further and finds begins cracking open rocks he thinks has gold in them. Finally, he digs up a rock bigger than his head and cracks it open to find a giant deposit of gold. Digging down slightly further he find the pocket of gold, a large stream of gold running through the ground. He cheers for a second before seeing a shadow appear over the hole and hearing the earth shifting behind him. there at the base of the hole stands a man with a gun pointed at the prospector who shoots at him. the young outlaw sits at the base of the hole and smokes a cigarette before jumping inside. Upon jumping in, the prospector reveals to have been faking being dead and attacks the man, taking his gun and shooting him. after dragging tending his wounds and dragging the man out of the hole, the prospector digs out the rest of the gold and buries the outlaw. He leaves the valley with his gold and the animals return to the canyon.

“All Gold Canyon” is what I would call the most positive of these films, which is to say that it has the most optimistic view of people despite avidly portraying them as monsters. It does glimmer positively towards the positive attributes of man, such as a relentless persistence, a need for companionship, and perhaps an appreciation for the earths spoils, unfortunately not accompanied by a love of nature’s animals or splendor. The casting in this short is perfect, as Tom Waits, despite not being an actor, is the perfect person to play this prospector with a voice as harsh as the earth below him. in its gorgeous cinematography this short captures a tainted good nature that so embodies life in the old American west, as cynicism corrupts men as strong or weak as may come. The use of shadows and brilliant lights over the faces of everyone showing of their lies and ill intentions gives the short an energy that is entirely unique to the Coen brothers, a burn as slow as it is mature. Theoretically this short could be 5 minutes, and although it may feel stretched, all of it is necessary to feel that haunting sense of anticipation and looming sense of the classic gunslinger gunshot. Despite us not knowing anything about either character, they feel so real and lived, and that’s all thanks to the performance and visuals working together to create a grime over the screen that instead of suppressing the image, only enhances the western scraps of gold in the American soot. Its poetic in its delivery and powerful in its messages, a delight to watch and a marvel to listen to, with music that will simultaneously haunt your nightmares and be the background to your wildest dreams. A gorgeous piece of cinema that more than earns its place in this marvelous film.

The penultimate short is called “The Gal Who Got Rattled” a name that whilst filming, I feel worsens the experience of the short through its not so subtle foreshadowing. This film opens on a dinner with a moderately rich southern family, focusing on a brother and sister, named Gilbert and Alice, and their plans to travel west to Oregon. The brother is shown to be an arrogant businessman and the woman is a shy and retreated maiden meant to be married to a man they shall meet out west, a partner of the brother. As they set off on their journey, their dog, President Pierce, is shown to be a barking nuisance to the accompanying carts. Gilbert is shown to be degrading towards Alice and to have a deathly cough. By the next morning Gilbert is dead of pneumonia. Alice is comforted by cowboys Billy Knapp and Mr. Arthur who help bury him. That night, Alice confides in Knapp that her hired boy is overcharging her, and he agrees to help her. She tells Knapp that Gilbert was a failure and that all her money was on his person, which is now buried half a day’s ride away in his waistcoat. The next day, Knapp tells Alice that he couldn’t get the hired boy to budge, and of the other travelers annoyance with President Pierce, and he offers to put him down. He goes out to the desert, giving off three shots, and telling Alice that he in fact missed. The next day, Alice goes to Knapp telling him that the hired boy is demanding his money or telling her that he will depart if his money is not received. Knapp tells her to inform the hired boy that the agreement remains, asking her to trust him while he thinks on it for a day. the next morning, Knapp tells Arthur of his plans to ask for Alice’s hand in marriage. That night at a campfire dance, Knapp asks Alice to wed him and she agrees. Alice says to Knapp how he makes her anxiety with people go away and they share a moment of solace. Knapp tells Arthur that Alice accepted his proposal and he barely pays attention. That night, Alice listens to Knapp talk of how he feels of Arthur, how he thinks of his sixth sense of the prairie as a marvelous talent. The next day, Arthur finds horse tracks and sees that Alice has gone missing. He questions the hired boy who tells him that he heard President Pierce, and Arthur hurries off on his horse to find Alice in a field petting the dog. Arthur realizes they are trapped by Indians arms himself with a rifle and gives Alice a handgun. He tells her that the gun she holds has two bullets, which is in case they get caught, for her to shoot him then herself. The attack starts and Arthur scares off a large group, also killing half a dozen Indians, and the second wave begins. After it seems that the second wave is over, Arthur approaches a seemingly rider less horse when suddenly an Indian appears behind it and hits him over the head with a cane. The Indian demounts the horse to scalp Arthur and Arthur awakes and shoots him. he walks over to President Pierce who is barking senselessly at Alice, who has shot herself out of fear. Arthur returns to the trail and sees Knapp approaching. The short ends there.

This short I would say is the most average of them all, which is a shame since it has some of the best acting and since it is the longest. The writing is as wonderful as any Coen brothers film or short, but the story itself is filled with repetition, as you probably picked up by reading the summary. The scenes always follow as such- a short dialogue between either Knapp and Arthur or some other side characters during the day, and then at the night scene, Knapp and Alice discuss her brother, Arthur, President Pierce, or the hired boy. While the scenes by themselves are interesting and rich in character eccentricities, but when one comes after the other with very little change in scenery, which would be fine if the entire story took place in one location, but you see the beautiful sweeping shots of the prairie and just want more scenes there, instead of the same campfire we see half a dozen times. The acting, although not requiring of much range, is spectacular in its simplicity, as every motivation and emotion is driven and logical. Even the characters with mere seconds of screen time like the guests at the dinner table make the entire scene feel so lived in and real that it works every time. The score for this short is the weakest of the entire film, simply due to its monotonous nature, with very similar swells and beats, but it works to thematically show the physical and mental distance of the journey. the entire short reads like a one act play, and in that regard, the pace and series of events works brilliantly, letting scenes breathe and play not, never rushing it along and never letting the drag worsen the film. There are certain shots here that are so gorgeous I would gladly print them out and hang them as a poster. The emptiness of the south and the dusty sheen on every character’s face is so wonderfully captured, it really is a shame that those shots are so far between the same campfire lights. There are small details in this short, like a man dancing with a human sized puppet, that show the amount of thought out into making this world authentic and alive. The design of the wagons and the costumes is probably the best in the entire film, as the giant wagons and the oxen pulling them give the film a spit shine that it deserves, so its golden bits bleed through while leaving its western gruffness. The film breathes a presence that makes the west feel homely and yet foreign. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, I only wish there was more expression in the dialogue scenes and a little shorter runtime.

The final short, my favorite one, is called “The Mortal Remains”. The entire film takes place in a stagecoach and features an interaction between 5 characters headed to Fort Morgan; a trapper (Chelcie Ross), a refined woman (Tyne Daly), a Frenchman (Saul Rubinek) and two bounty hunters, one Irish (Brendan Gleeson) and one English (Jonjo O’Neill). The film opens on the Englishman singing a song as the other persons ignore him. He wakes the trapper and they discuss their trip to Fort Morgan. They begin to talk about their cargo, which is a body, and the trapper talks about his experiences living alone in the forest and travelling with a woman of the Sioux tribe with whom he lived with for many years. Throughout his monologue, the lady and the Frenchman are shown to be slightly uncomfortable with the trappers ramblings and his stench. When asked if he loved the woman, the trapper mentions how he believes man is the same as ferrets and beavers, to which the rich woman retorts that there are two distinct kinds of people, which she believes to be upright people and sinning people. they begin to debate morally over the authority of the bible, and she says she is speaking on the authority of her husband, who is a lecturer of moral and spiritual hygiene at a prestigious university. The conversation shifts to the separation of the woman and her husband, where she speaks about how they had been apart for several years and plan to meet in Fort Morgan. She says how she has stayed with her daughter for many months and the Frenchman criticizes this decision, remarking how she was unknowingly a burden to her daughter. The Frenchman begins to tell a story about man with whom he played cards, and how he represents the singularity of ones understanding of the world. The lay remarks how the Frenchman is a man of sin due to his affinity to gambling. The Frenchman says how no one can know another entirely and relates this to the lady and her relationship with her husband, how there’s no way of her to know whether or not he still loves her after 3 years. He tells her that she forced the love between her husband and herself, so the lady begins to beat him with a cane before having a panicked fit. As the lady chokes, the Frenchman demands to stop the coach, but the Englishman informs him that the coach never stops. Once everyone calms down, the Irishman begins to sing a folk song, which prompts the Englishman to cry. He mentions how with the business he’s in, he shouldn’t be so emotional, and reveals to the other passengers that they are indeed assassins. They talk of their teamwork, how the Englishman distracts with a story, and the Irishman does the “thumping”. The Englishman talks about why the stories work to distract, as people become a part of the story. The Englishman says how he enjoys looking into his victims eyes to see their passage from this world to the next. The coach comes to a sudden halt and the bounty hunters unload the body and drag him inside. The other passengers reluctantly follow them inside and close the door behind them bringing the short and the film to a close.

This is my favorite short in the entire film, as it does what it can to encapsulate the themes of the film in a conclusive short, and while I think it doesn’t finish the “story” of the film in a satisfying way, it does summarize the messages in a profound manner that had me gushing over this short days after it was over. The only real problem with this short is that its too short, and I think more time in the coach would’ve been better. The film is similar to a film by Ken Loach, not in its subject matter, but its presentation of people, as they seem, in the eyes of the filmmakers, to be as curious and fascinating as they are foolish and redundant. The short engrosses the battling philosophies of man that seem to perpetuate the various themes of this film. They say there are two kinds of men. Are they singing men and slinging men? Outlaws and tellers? Actors and impresarios? Gold diggers and bandits? Those who make it to Oregon and those who don’t? or maybe, as the film itself would imply, the dead and the living. The cinematography is close and invisible, razor focused and yet as free floating as a feather. The acting is absolutely spot on, with many beautifully written monologues and sequences delivered with the range and professionalism of a seasoned veteran of theatre and film. The presentation of this short was more theatrical than what I’m most used to and what I came to expect, but those green gels that get blasted over the scene, while not realistic, do give the air a stench of death. The characters themselves philosophize and theorize in ways that always ascend the movie to a higher plane of understanding, a higher knowledge of what a man or woman can be, and it makes the entire film classier and tighter. The writing in this segment is so pitch perfect that I don’t know how one could improve upon this script. Certain lines are delivered with such perfect dramatic or comedic timing one wonders how many takes it took to get it right. The singing, both at the beginning and end of this short makes one appreciate the various little songs more and more as the film continues, and the final song is so haunting and melancholy, as though every character who has died would be hearing it upon their death. It is a comedic tragic masterpiece and if you’re going to watch any of these shorts, please watch this one.

That’s the entirety of the film. It’s not absurdly long or particularly hard to unpack, but it does get one thinking and philosophizing alongside its tragic and hilarious characters. It’s perfect in balancing its tone and ideas, spreading them out and expanding upon them so it’s not just a stupid thought thrown at a wall, but rather a thesis on death that gets built upon layer by layer. It is beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, with creative choices and liberties taken only to make the film better. The dirt and grime of the west is idolized and glorified, giving this film a sense of humility and respect that would only be so fitting, and it truly does feel like a bunch of smart kids made it, as it has the brains of an adult backed by the wild ambition of kids. My only real complaint is the order in which the shorts are in, and the need to make it a film in the first place. When looking at a film, many times one can see why it exists the way it does. You ask, why did they make this into a film and not a book or a play or a tv show, and it usually makes the film better, as you realize why some choices were made, but for Buster Scruggs I watched the film and loved it but kept wondering why they didn’t just make a miniseries. It would’ve helped to overall pace and tonal shifts flow easier. Either way, its still a brilliant film by two brilliant directors, and upon rewatching this all I can think about is how there are two kinds of people; those who love The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and those who need to watch it again.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs gets a 9/10