![]() He does not question his crimes but he is perturbed about his nickname as ‘The Misanthrope’ (labeled in his Wanted poster) when, according to him, “I don’t hate my fellow man, even when he’s tiresome and surly and tries to cheat at poker. I figure that’s just a human material and him that finds it in cause for anger and dismay is just a fool for expecting better.” There is not a more direct moment of the Coens alluding to a common read of them since in The Big Lebowski, when ‘The Dude’ is introduced to a member of The Nihilists gives a response of, “Must be exhausting!” Buster in his jolly demeanor and all-white clothing is the perfect mask as the segment’s unreliable narrator to subvert the audience he is speaking to, which is a cocktail of two very different Coen sensibilities, as he goes on his journey of no real destination beyond wanting to find a place for an honest game of poker. ![]() Short of having a carrot in his mouth to chomp on, Buster Scruggs speaks directly to his new audience, the viewer, and immediately reveals he is a wanted man. Buster Scruggs then proceeds to break the fourth-wall and what happens next is quite stunning. The echoes of Scruggs’ voice around the red rocks and boulders give him a back-up chorus in his one-man show, his only real relationship being with his horse, Dan. The ‘Buster Scruggs’segment begins with ‘the lone rider’ Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) riding through Monument Valley on horseback- with guitar in hand- singing The Sons of Pioneers (in addition to being tied to Hobie Doyle inspiration Roy Rogers, the group also provided the music as Greek chorus for John Ford’s masterpiece Wagon Master) classic song “Cool, Cool Water”. But nothing can quite prepare the audience for this segment of ultra-violence and broad humor that’s in a veil of earnestness covering arsenic. There have been strokes of heightened madcap quality evocative of American animation in their work before: the comic hijinks chases of Raising Arizona, as were the visuals of futurist Art Deco colliding with earnest American ingenuity in The Hudsucker Proxy, and a singing cowboy with acrobatic skills on a horse and with a gun was teased in the star persona of Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) in Hail, Caesar!. ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ is the most violent and comedic segment of the whole film that renders it a cartoon in ways not seen before by the Coens. Buster Scruggs is a live-action Wild West cartoon by design. But the eponymous ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’story, the first segment of the film, feels closer to Old West (and Western film) pasquinade, indebted not to Zane Grey, Owen Wister, or even Larry McMurtry, but to Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, and The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodiesanimated shorts. The stories in Buster Scruggs ( ‘Near Algodones’, ‘Meal Ticket’, ‘All Gold Canyon’, ‘The Gal That Got Rattled’, and ‘The Mortal Remains’) all feel of a piece of Old West fiction and could easily be imagined in book form. ![]() The overall result is a distillation of the Coens’ entire career that both surprise, disarm an audience (or in this case Netflix user) in ways only they know how, and offer as much metatextual humor while not actively seeking to convert the unwilling. Joel and Ethan Coen’s anthology Western, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, much like a lot of their previous body of work is indebted to literature and they take it a step further by making the open title sequence tied to literary conceit that this film will open, begin and close each segment of the film like a chapter of the book.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |