The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Today’s quick review: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. In the Old West, a singing outlaw (Tim Blake Nelson) meets his match; a robber (James Franco) faces an eccentric bank teller (Stephen Root); a traveling showman (Liam Neeson) manages a crippled orator (Harry Melling); a prospector (Tom Waits) strikes gold; a young woman (Zoe Kazan) and her foolish brother (Jefferson Mays) head for Oregon; and the passengers in a stage coach discuss philosophy.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a Western anthology from the Coen Brothers. The film consists of six vignettes about life in the Old West, ranging in tone from black comedy to bleak drama. Each one presents a twisted take on the Western genre and its people, including prospectors, pioneers, and a few varieties of outlaw. However, the film’s eclectic tone, bleak philosophy, and disjointed vignettes keep it from hitting its stride.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has a hard time balancing its tone. The anthology starts on a note of sociopathic, almost cartoonish violence with the titular segment. From there it dips into the absurd, the macabre, the mundane, and the tragic in turn. A sort of nihilism pervades the film. The base, foolish side of human nature is on full display, and the stories rarely end well for their characters. There’s no sense of normalcy to fall back on.

The deliberate, meandering style of the Coen Brothers works against them here. The anthology format means that there’s little time to draw the viewer in and even less to explore the stories’ ideas. Each story is built around a punchline, moral, or reversal. At best, the story leading up to the punchline is enough to set it up and give it impact. But more often than not, the stories are too thin to make the payoff worthwhile.

The movie does have its moments. Highlights include Tim Blake Nelson’s singing voice, the unconventional tactics of Stephen Root’s bank teller, and the dry, nuanced relationship that arises between a shy pioneer (Zoe Kazan) and the leader of her caravan (Bill Heck). There’s a wide variety of visuals on display, and the direction does a good job of guiding the viewer’s focus. But the emptiness and futility of the stories are hard to overcome.

Fans of the Coen Brothers may want to give The Ballad of Buster Scruggs a shot. The stories capture the breadth of the Brothers’ style and will appeal to those who share their taste for the bleak and the ironic. But the rich characters and sense of serendipity that normally attenuate the darker side of their work are all but missing. What’s left is a medley of ideas and situations that hold individual interest but lack the scaffolding to support them.

For a Coen Brothers comedy with a more optimistic tone, try O Brother, Where Art Thou?. For a more stirring Western, try Tombstone. For a Western that makes better use of its violence, try Django Unchained. For a deeper tale of human folly, try The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

7.4 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.5 for a fine cast and good craftsmanship hurt by tonal issues and stories that are hard to invest in.