The Coen brothers chapter and verse
Violent and funny, Scruggs has some storytelling grit
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS 1/2 out of 5
Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Zoe Kazan Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen Duration: 2h12m
Twenty years ago, the Coen brothers told an interviewer that they’d never made a western and hoped to do so. They also had an idea for something called The Contemplations, in which an “old leather-bound book” in a “dusty old library” held chapters that were each a segment in the movie.
They made their first western (of sorts), No Country for Old Men, in 2007, and a proper one three years later with True Grit. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is their third, and qualifies as that leather-bound anthology as well.
The title is misleading; The Ballad of Buster Scruggs refers only to the film’s first chapter, which stars Tim Blake Nelson as a ceaselessly cheery, warbling gunslinger. The rest of the stories — a touch uneven, as collections are wont to be — comprise a sixshooter of a movie.
For all its hot-iron violence, The Ballad is a raucously funny tale, and the humour carries into the second chamber piece, full of actual gallows humour. (“First time?” asks James Franco of an inconsolable man wearing a noose.)
Things get darker with the third shot, starring Harry Melling as a limbless performer forced to sing for his supper. Next up is Tom Waits as a patient prospector seeking gold. And a feminine angle can be found in the penultimate chapter, with Zoe Kazan playing a single woman trying to make it to Oregon on the troublesome trail. The sextet concludes with a westernthemed ghost story starring Brendan Gleeson.
The short-story format will perhaps not fully satisfy fans of the Coens who yearn for another full-fledged feature.
But the brothers have been increasingly scattered of late, alternating their standard writing-and-directing gigs with scriptwriting duties on the likes of Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, Steven Spielberg ’s Bridge of Spies and George Clooney’s disappointing Suburbicon. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has a few flat notes, but it remains the purest, most unadulterated Coen brothers movie in years.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs starts streaming Friday on Netflix.