"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs": review

2018's "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" was written, directed, and produced by the indefatigable Coen Brothers. It is an anthology movie involving six Western-inflected vignettes. While the stories seem disconnected, they do have what I might call a throughline or an underlying theme that's fairly easy to spot. More on that later. I will attempt to summarize each vignette, without giving away major spoilers, before moving on to the review proper.

We open with "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," which is essentially the story of Buster Scruggs, a happy-go-lucky singing cowboy (Tim Blake Nelson) who also happens to be an amazingly proficient gunslinger. Buster frequently talks to himself and to us, breaking the fourth wall routinely. He shows us a wanted poster with his face on it and wanders from bar to bar, simply craving a drink and maybe a game of cards, but always ending up in some sort of deadly altercation that does nothing to dampen his nearly psychotic cheer. (In one such altercation, an unarmed Buster cleverly uses a table as a weapon.) Things change, though, when Buster meets a young, black-clad cowboy who is just a tad too polite.

In "Near Algodones," we meet a young bank robber (James Franco) who has a penchant for repeatedly ending up at the end of a hangman's noose to the point where, while standing next to a weeping man on a hanging scaffold, he jokingly asks the weeper, "First time?"—a question that shocks the man out of his sobs.

"Meal Ticket" is a fairly somber story about a traveling-show manager (Liam Neeson) and his armless, legless sidekick-performer Harrison (Harry Melling, better known as Dudley Dursley from the Harry Potter films). The two travel from mountain town to mountain town, encountering dwindling audiences who show an ever-decreasing interest in Harrison's act, which involves reciting passages from various works ranging from Shakespeare to the Bible to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. As the money dries up, the manager looks across town and sees an act that draws crowds: a chicken that seems able to do math by pecking at numbers written on bells. This gives the manager an idea that isn't going to make Harrison very happy. What's especially interesting about this vignette is how Harrison, despite being shown saying plenty to audiences as he recites the great works, has almost no dialogue with his manager. They communicate in facial expressions and gestures.

"All Gold Canyon" is apparently a retelling of a Jack London story of the same title. A lone, old prospector (the always-interesting Tom Waits) happens upon a completely untrammeled patch of land where he suspects he's going to find a vein of gold. He begins digging a series of holes and pans for gold in a nearby creek. Through this method, he's able to figure out where the most gold is, and he does indeed strike a huge vein. Little does the prospector know, however, that he's been quietly followed by a young man (Sam Dillon) intent upon letting the prospector do all the work so that the young man can take the gold for himself.

The fifth vignette is titled "The Girl Who Got Rattled." A young lady named Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) is to head west with her older brother Gilbert (Jefferson Mays). Gilbert is a failure as a businessman, but he thinks he's got good prospects in Oregon, where he's to partner up with a man who will marry Alice. Alas, Gilbert dies of cholera right at the start of the journey west, and Alice decides to continue west to an unknown future. Billy Knapp (Bill Heck), one of two wagon-train guides, sympathizes with Alice's plight and discovers that the late Gilbert had promised Matt, the boy tending to Alice's wagon, the hefty sum of $400 to guide Gilbert and Alice west to Oregon. Matt still expects payment even though Alice suspects that $200 of that total ended up being accidentally buried with Gilbert. Billy learns all this and, after some consideration, offers his hand in marriage to Alice, promising to quit his wagon-train guide duties, settle down, become a farmer, and pay Matt what he's owed. Alice is initially taken aback by Billy's offer, but she has become fond of Billy, and she can foresee a good future with him. All seems well until a Sioux raiding party appears, and Mr. Arthur (Grainger Hines), the wagon train's older and more experienced guide, has to find Alice and protect her from the marauding Sioux. All future plans suddenly go out the window.

The sixth and final vignette is "The Mortal Remains," and it's easily the most metaphysical of the short stories. The entire vignette comes off like a stage play, with a bunch of colorful characters essentially trapped together inside a stagecoach that will not stop for any reason. Two of these characters are bounty hunters (Jonjo O'Neill and Brendan Gleeson); there's also a Frenchman (Saul Rubinek, with a decent French accent when he pronounces certain French words); a prissy, uptight lady (Tyne Daly); and a trapper (Chelcie Ross, nearly unrecognizable with that beard, hair, and fur hat). These people debate everything from human nature to the nature of love to the passage from life to death. It's an open question as to whether they learn anything from each other.

I really liked this movie, even though its central theme—death—was about as subtle as a freight train. Every vignette features one or more deaths. Sometimes, these deaths occur off camera; sometimes, they take place right before our eyes (and showcase the Coen Brothers' love of shots to the middle of the forehead: cf. "Burn After Reading," "No Country for Old Men," etc.). Several characters in the film struck me as representations of the angel of death, and at least one of the stories seemed to imply that the angel of death gets successively replaced. The final vignette came off as a hit-you-over-the-head metaphor, with the carriage driver (who never speaks) in the role of Charon or a psychopomp, carrying the souls inside the carriage to the land of the dead, even if the characters themselves don't all seem to realize they're already dead.

Certain distinctive Coen Brothers' touches can be seen throughout the film—tropes that you've doubtless noticed in their other works, like flapping angel's wings ("The Hudsucker Proxy"), people breaking into song, and the avoidance of contractions in dialogue (cf. "True Grit"). The film's tone, as we transition from story to story, gets progressively darker, moving from comic to touching to chilling. The characters populating these stories aren't always likable; you'll root for some and despise others, but on the whole, they represent a human spectrum, allowing us to contemplate death from multiple angles. "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is a meditative and existential movie, and it'll leave you thinking.

A song called "The Unfortunate Lad" recurs throughout the film, and it's explicitly sung by Brendan Gleeson (I think Tom Waits's prospector also sings parts of it). When I heard it, I thought it had a lot in common with the "Spanish Ladies" song sung by Robert Shaw's Quint in the 1975 movie "Jaws." But as I researched the two songs, I couldn't find a direct connection between them, and truth be told, the two tunes do contain some major differences. The song is, as you might imagine, about death—specifically, the expression of a dying man's wish. It is, at least, consistent with the central theme of the movie.

In terms of acting props, I should single out Tim Blake Nelson, who is hilarious in the role of the eponymous Buster Scruggs. Nelson actually has a great singing voice, too, and despite his naturally goofy looks, he's obviously a talented, even chameleonic, actor. Next, I have to give a shout-out to my man Tom Waits, actor and singer. I remember Waits's scenery-chewing performance as Renfield in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula movie (English accent and all); Waits can be as subtle as Bruce Dern, as gravelly as Nick Nolte, and as extravagant as Peter O'Toole when he wants to be. His prospector character is fascinating to watch. While I'm at it, I'll give a shout-out to Zoe Kazan, who didn't annoy me, for once. She was, I thought, one of the weaker elements of "The Big Sick," but in this movie, she manages to pull off the combination of winsome and star-crossed with aplomb. Bill Heck, as Zoe Kazan's possible love interest, exuded an agreeably gentlemanly air. Liam Neeson, as the impresario, was appropriately desolate, and Harry Melling's armless, legless Harrison was a far cry from the role of Dudley Dursley—I mean that in a good way. All of the actors in "The Mortal Remains" were veterans, each excellent in his or her own way—Tyne Daly as the easily offended Lady; Saul Rubinek as a worldly Frenchman; Brendan Gleeson and Jonjo O'Neill as bounty hunters who are a little too into their work; and special praise to Chelcie Ross as the trapper who spends his life in silence while he's out in the woods, but who becomes a "tedious" chatterbox the moment he's back in civilization. If I seem to be leaving out James Franco and the rest of the cast of "Near Algodones," it may be because that was my least-favorite vignette of the six. It wasn't bad, but I suspect that, over time, it'll end up being the least memorable.

Given my own biases, I couldn't help but view the film through a Buddhist lens. Every religion has some sort of focus on death: in Christianity, death plays many roles: it's the gateway you step through on your way to heaven or hell, and it's associated with things like self-sacrifice ("no greater love"). In Ecclesiastes/Qoheleth, it's a marker of impermanence, which is a good bridge over to Buddhism. In Buddhism, death is forever associated with impermanence and change, things that make all human activities vain. Flesh, and even spirit, are but passing things in the Buddhist point of view, and "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" does focus on vanity—how our ambitions, plots, and plans only end up as dust with the inevitable passage of time. Now, Buddhism takes this sobering reality and derives from it the moral message that, because things pass, because you can hold on to nothing, the only thing you have is this present moment, which itself is there and gone. This infinitesimal slice of time, then, is where you have to find your meaning, which is what makes it so important to keep your primary focus on the now, not on your ambitions, plots, and plans. Who will remember anything about you in a hundred years? In two hundred?

"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" invites you to ponder questions of life and death. A Buddhist lens brings a certain focus to the task, but you can contemplate existence even if you're Christian or Hindu or Muslim or atheistic. Where do you locate your meaning, and what are you striving for that isn't vain? Even though "Scruggs" isn't very subtle about its existential message, it's entertaining food for thought, and if you haven't seen it yet, I enthusiastically invite you to do so. Narratives, which are immersive and dimensional, are a great way to ponder morals, values, life, the universe, and everything.