‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’

Six disparate tales of death and dying are the sum of ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ (2018). A dramatic dive into the Old West written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.

Based on various short stories the duo wrote over the last 20 years as well as a tale by Jack London and another by Stewart Edward White, the film plays like an anthology moving through various moods and characters on the brink of killing or dying.

The first to meet his demise is Tim Blake Nelson’s Buster Scruggs, who is a Coen-esque combo of keen crooner and fastest gun in the west.

Absurd, intriguing and introducing the American frontier as canonical outlaws, cowboys, saloons, poker games and quick draws, ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ looks like the Westerns you know but with Coen sensibility ensuring it ends with an angel making his way to the sweet hereafter playing a lute.

Bookended with pictures and pages from an old collection of stories hinting at scenes to come, the film ticks on towards a vignette starring James Franco as a bank robber who gets a little more than he bargained for before Liam Neeson and Harry Melling tell the bleak tale of an impresario and his sole act winding their way through a series of small towns in ‘Meal Ticket’.

With three stories set in and around town, the fourth showcases the wide open spaces and lush valley that is the scene of ‘All Gold Canyon’, which stars an excellent Tom Waits as an old prospector in search of a gold pocket.

Character driven and often dark, the anthology strikes an odd pace but boasts stars parlaying the brevity into intense and memorable performances, particularly in the case of ‘All Gold Canyon’, ‘Meal Ticket’ and ‘The Gal Who Got Rattled’, starring Zoe Kazan.

Mining clichés including problematic depictions of ‘savage Indians’, the Coens deliver a largely interesting experience that ends with an episode called ‘Mortal Remains’.

Starring Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Jonjo O’Neill, Chelcie Ross and Saul Rubinek as characters making their way to Fort Morgan within the confines of a stage coach, ‘Mortal Remains’ is claustrophobic, metaphorical and ascending in tension as the Coens seem to imagine that unknowable ferrying of souls to reunite with long-lost loved ones, otherworldly hotel or maker.

‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ (2018) is now streaming on Netflix.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com