Six campfire stories run hot and cold in Coen film
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
(out of 4) Starring Tim Blake Nelson, Zoe Kazan, Liam Neeson, James Franco, Tom Waits, Bill Heck, Brendan Gleeson and Tyne Daly. Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 132 minutes. STC
Westerns are nothing new for Joel and Ethan Coen. Their last official oater was True Grit in 2010, but they’re brought campfire sensibilities and locales to other films, including No Country for Old Men, Fargo and Blood Simple.
Nor is their tendency to torment protagonists anything novel.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is right in their ranch house, in other words, but it does offer a change of pace in its anthology form: six distinct stories about life in the Old West, some more interesting than others. It was created to be a series for Netflix, where it’s headed following a big-screen run at TIFF Bell Lightbox, but the Coens decided they liked it better as a movie.
Viewers will decide for themselves if that was a good idea, because the lack of a cohesive narrative — other than a cynical view of pioneer days and ways — makes the film a hit-or-miss proposition. All of the stories have fateful endings, which suggest the Brothers Coen have been reading Dostoevsky’s The
Brothers Karamazov or maybe O. Henry’s surprise-laden shorts.
The movie starts out strong with the title chapter, as Tim Blake Nelson proves to be a most engaging oddball. He’s a sharpshooting troubadour with a self-proclaimed “pleasing baritone,” a man not to be messed with despite his diminutive stature and tendency to provoke cantankerous locals. Can he survive his own hubris?
“Near Algones” follows, featuring James Franco as a badass bank robber you can’t help feeling sorry for, even as he does his dastardly deeds. A man shouldn’t have to face the noose twice in one lifetime.
“Meal Ticket” is the weirdest of the stories, with Liam Neeson playing a conniving itinerant impresario. He travels with a legless and armless orator ( Harry Potter’s Harry Melling) to remote locales for the pur- pose of literary edification and amusement: he expounds from Shakespeare, the Gettysburg Address and the like. But audiencesget distracted when an orange-feathered chicken begins drawing crowds with its own freaky show — could this be the Coens’ twisted take on Trump? — and loyalties fray.
“All Gold Canyon” is like a Charlie Chaplin short, with a shaggily bearded Tom Waits playing a prospector discovering the truth about the Shakespearean line that “all that glitters is not gold.”
“The Gal Who Got Rattled” is the second-best of the tales, with Zoe Kazan as a shy frontier woman whose brother has her on a wagon train bound for Oregon, there to marry a rich man and settle down. Events conspire to make the trip risky, with romantic intrigue offered by a rivalry between the wagon leader (Bill Heck) and his taciturn trail partner (Grainger Hines). This one’s a heartbreaker; Kazan’s second only to Nelson as the film’s main attraction.
The Coens should have left it at that, but they leave us with “The Mortal Remains,” a puzzling short set mostly inside a moving stagecoach. There are two bounty hunters (Brendan Gleeson and Jonjo O’Neill), a gruff trapper (Chelcie Ross), a French dandy (Saul Rubinek) and a fancy lady (Tyne Daly).
There’s too much talk and an ending that goes nowhere. But the film as a whole satisfies, even if it’s something less than the sum of its parts. Any new Coen Bros. offering is always worth celebrating.