Alastair McKay Saddle up with the singing cowboy — those Coen brothers know how to twist a western
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Netflix
WHEN it was first announced, this compendium of western tales was going to be a TV series. Instead, with six stories wrapped into one, it becomes a film, albeit one that is given only the briefest of cinema runs before settling down on Netflix.
Generically, it’s still a bit unsure of itself. There is a framing device — a book of western yarns from which these chapters are derived — but the six parts aren’t connected, except in the way they reframe the Wild West.
Actually, that’s not quite right. As much as anything, these stories address the myth of the Wild West. They are stories about stories, and the film is a re-examination of western lore. That may sound onerous but the parts are delivered with a real lightness of touch; the reticent sense of humour that inhabits all the Coen brothers’ work, in which laughter bounces back with an awkward echo. But still, these are matinee memories, reframed, if not re-dressed.
The first part — the title story — is the best. It features Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs, a singing cowboy with an extraordinarily quick trigger finger. No sooner has he shot his foes than he is celebrating in song, with the whole saloon singing backing vocals.
There is, as ever, a surprise in this tale of the unexpected — but the ballistic logic of the plot is less important than its 10-gallon design: the white hat, the white horse, the inhospitable cantina that only serves whisky to outlaws, and the exaggerated speech of Scruggs, who talks like a cowpoke who swallowed a dictionary. “Don’t let my white duds and pleasant demeanour fool you,” he warns, shortly before shooting up the joint. There’s a song, too, a lovely thing written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and performed by Nelson and Willie Watson, who appears in the film as The Kid.
The second story, Near Algodones, is like a chemical reduction of the formulaic western, with the elements boiled away until all that remains is the bank in the New Mexico desert, a horse and a noose. James Franco plays Cowboy and Stephen Root has a lot of fun as Teller, particularly when he appears in a suit of armour fashioned from pots and pans. It’s a bank job, and it doesn’t go according to plan.
The third part, Meal Ticket, is the strangest. There is a travelling freak show with one exhibit, Professor Harrison, the Wingless Thrush (Harry Mell i n g ), wh o re c i t e s to d i mi n i s h i n g crowds, though his body is no more than a torso and a head.
The impresario, Liam Neeson, wears a fur coat and sings The Sash. Possibly, there is a metaphor about politics lurking here, though it could equally be about showbusiness.
A ravaged Tom Waits stars in the existentially charged fourth story, All Gold Canyon, prospecting for gold in the middle of nowhere, which is beautifully observed and unashamedly bleak. The Gal Who Got Rattled has Zoe Kazan as a girl with a dog who enjoys an almost romance before encountering some inhospitable Indians.
The film closes with The Mortal Remains, a gothic tale of an Englishman ( Jo n j o O ’ Ne i l l ), a n I r i s h ma n (Brendan Gleeson), a Frenchman (Saul Rubinek) and a Lady ( T y n e D a ly) trapped together on a stagecoach to hell, or similar.
The corpse on the roof is a clue.