The Coen brothers chapter and verse

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 six-shooter 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 western-themed ghost story starring Brendan Gleeson.

The short-story format will perhaps not fully satisfy fans of the Coens, who yearn for another fullfledged 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 Suburbicon.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs starts streaming today on Netflix.