The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a good example of a film that looks appealing and could be something that I might enjoy, but also are full of elements that I usually will push off for a while because while I'm sure they're good, I just usually don't get me to watch these kind of movies right away. Coen Brothers movies, I know they're good but I don't go out of my way to watch them. Westerns, similar idea. I think the thing that made me finally give in and check it out was word of mouth. I heard a lot of friends and online reviewers talk really well of this movie and the multiple unrelated narratives sounded interesting to me. On top of that, 6 interesting but unrelated stories made this movie feel more like an Old West miniseries rather than a full movie so it was a little more digestible and I felt better taking a break after one story and coming back for the next.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs tells six short stories set in the Old West. It's kind of hard to describe the film because these stories are really unique and feel like a collection of short films rather than a whole movie.

I think a common theme among all of these stories is they are very dark and they are very philosophical. However, the cool thing is that you can take these stories on face value and they are really good. But if you think about the larger philosophical ideas in them, the Coen Brothers are able to make a simple story of a bunch of passengers in a stage coach having a conversation seem like really important idea piece. Symbolism of nature, age, circumstance, struggle, and death surround a lot of these stories and they're all done really well.

On top of that, the movie has just a superb cast who shine in their respective story from well known actors like Liam Neeson and James Franco to the lesser known actors like Zoe Kazan, Tim Blake Nelson, and Tom Waits.

Honestly the movie is really hard to review because each short story is so different from the one before it. Tim Blake Nelson's is almost a musical black comedy with a lot of dialogue and song, while Liam Neeson's has barely any diagetic dialogue and is very serious. Tom Waits's story might be my favorite and the majority of it is just him talking to himself because its essentially just him alone in the wilderness.

Even the stories that start of a little boring really had me by the end. The one with Zoe Kazan was the closest to being the weakest, but then the Coens manage to show off that they do action and suspense just as well as their heavy dialogue so by the end I was literally on the edge of my seat in suspense because they're able to show off these characters really well in such a short time.

I think my only issue with the film is that it doesn't feel like a cohesive movie. And that's not even a really bad issue to have considering it is 6 short stories in a sort of anthology. I think this movie works perfectly for Netflix because you could easily watch these stories like episodes in a TV show. I watched two, paused the film, did some other stuff, came back finished another two, did the same thing, then finished it up later and I didn't feel like I was missing anything because they are so unrelated to one another besides their setting of the Old West.

Honestly by the end of it, I kind of hope that the Coen Brothers return to this setting and do another one of these, or maybe make a Black Mirror type anthology series because these were a lot of fun.

Again, I'll mention they are very dark. Don't go into this thinking you're going into a fun happy go lucky western film despite the singing Cowboy being the titular character.

But I think you get a lot of Coen Brothers philosophical thinking pieces in this movie and it actually made me wanting more by the end of it. If you haven't checked it out already, it's on Netflix, it might be among the best feature films to be produced by the streaming service.

But those are my thoughts on The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. What did you think? You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks of reading!