Review by C.J. Bunce
Although the first chapter in the anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs will have you thinking the new straight-to-Netflix movie is more of the same from the Coen Brothers, the subsequent chapters may have you think again. It just may be the most thought-provoking, subdued, and effective film from the entire catalog of Coen Brothers films, and it may even eclipse Bone Tomahawk and the Coens’ own True Grit as this century’s best Westerns–at least in parts (and it’s a leap ahead of Quentin Tarentino’s past two efforts). Netflix’s Mudbound was nominated this year in major categories (but didn’t win) and the studio brought in one documentary Oscar, but can this new Coens release bring Oscar home to Netflix for a major, large-scale production?
The common thread of the film is classic Americana: 19th century settlers possessed a kind of unique grit, and they paid a steep price, in unique and unglamorous ways, to build a nation. The film chronicles six fictional fails and near fails that might have happened (mostly), presented as chapters of an anthology dime novel. The first chapter follows the title character, a goofy but sure-shootin’ singing cowboy played by Tim Blake Nelson, in a story that will have many thinking this movie is another Western parody like 1985’s Rustler’s Rhapsody (it is not). The next chapter follows a determined thief (James Franco) unsuccessfully robbing a bank in an era before the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment (in a mash-up inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”). Another story finds a young woman (Zoe Kazan of the famed film dynasty in a masterful performance) on a frontier wagon train just trying to make it to the next town. The least of the tales comes off more as a one-note Aesop’s Fable, as Liam Neeson‘s character carts a young limbless orator (played eloquently by well-known Harry Potter actor Harry Melling) from town to town carnival style for money. To round off the anthology, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, and Tyne Daly star in a John Ford-inspired stagecoach bit that would be good source material for a stage play.
But the best of the chapters is an adaptation of a Jack London story about an old gold prospector, a character study starring Tom Waits. His performance could be seamlessly spliced into any of the best classic Westerns. And it’s the kind of acting achievement that should earn Waits a supporting Oscar nod, if the Academy gets in lock-step with Netflix as a legitimate moviemaking studio. The other performance worth Oscar contention is Chelcie Ross‘s trapper in the stagecoach segment. His rambling story and delivery is laugh-out-loud funny, and you can almost see in the eyes of Rubinek and Daly a real struggle to hold back laughs.
Each of these takes on a supernatural feel, although these are really just dark Westerns, filmed in the Coens’ often odd yet artful manner. But it will leave fans of weird Westerns wondering whether it’s time for the Coens to create a Western in that sub-genre. Even if five-time Oscar nominee Bruno Delbonnel‘s cinematography is not John Ford, it has its own unique and classically American beauty.
You just cannot beat any film with a cameo by Clancy Brown, Stephen Root, David Krumholtz, and so many other character actors viewers may recognize from genre film and television. Watch for Bill Heck in the wagon train segment in a performance that should be a movie breakout role for the actor.
The Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is streaming now, only on Netflix.
