Butler's Cinema Scene

Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs

“THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS”  My rating: B (Now available on Netflix)

132 minutes | MPAA rating: R

At one point In the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” several condemned miscreants stand on the scaffold awaiting the long drop.  One man sobs inconsolably; the guy to  his right tries to be sympathetic: “Your first time?”

Now playing on Netflix, “Ballad…” might be considered a toss off…but it’s a hugely enjoyable toss off.

The brothers — Joel and Ethan — have given us six short films set in the Wild West.  They are filled with loquacious characters, memorable faces, off-the-charts beautiful scenery.

In tone they range from comedy (usually of a very dark variety) to O. Henry-ish irony. There are a few moments of sweetness…not that they last. And there are a couple of terrific action sequences.

Zoe Kazan

Of course, the Coens aren’t exactly new to the genre, having given us a brilliant version of “True Grit,” not to mention the sobering modern Western “No Country for Old Men.”  Here they seem to be reveling in the opportunity to pay  homage to traditional Western tropes while playfully thumbing their noses at same.

A broad comic tone is set with the opening segment, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” which features Tim Blake Nelson as a geeky parody of singing movie cowboys.  Buster wears an all-white suit, strums his guitar while riding (“he was mean in days of yore/now they’re mopping up the floor”), and cheerfully blows away anyone who gets in his way, employing a variety of trick shots. Of course, there’s always someone faster on the draw.

“Near Algodones” finds James Franco playing an outlaw with the world’s worst luck. A banker (Stephen Root) doesn’t take kindly to being robbed and fights back wearing armor made of kitchen pots and pans. The outlaw survives one lynching (it’s interrupted by an Indian attack) but he can’t rely on that sort of happy coincidence the next time he’s got a rope around his neck. The whole thing looks as if it were lifted from a Sergio Leone film.

James Franco

In “Meal Ticket”  a shabby impresario (Liam Neeson) makes a tour of mining camps with his one-man show featuring the Wingless Thrush (Harry Melling, late of the “Harry Potter” franchise), an armless, legless fellow who employs his hypnotically beautiful voice to recite from the Bible, the Gettysburg Address and Shakespeare.  It’s a weirdly symbiotic relationship…until it isn’t.

“All Gold Canyon” finds Tom Waits playing a grizzled old prospector who singlehandedly sleuths out and uncovers a thick vein of gold in a scenic valley.  The old fellow talks to himself incessantly…clearly Waits is channelling Walter Huston’s garrulous codger from “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

Tom Waits

In “The Gal Who Got Rattled” Zoe Kazan plays a virginal young woman left alone when her brother dies while they’re crossing the plains with a wagon train. She is wooed by one wagon master (Bill Heck) and finds herself fighting off an Indian attack with another (Grainger Hines). But happy endings are a rarity in Coenland.

Finally, in “The Mortal Remains”  five stagecoach passengers share a cramped ride through a dim landscape. They include a chatty (and smelly) trapper (Chelcie Ross), a disapproving grand dame (Tyne Daly), and a well-appointed salesman (Saul Rubinek); opposite them sit two taunting  fellows (Jonjo O’Neill, Brendan Gleeson) who seem to know more about their destination than they’re letting on. The segment features some delicious dialogue but you can see its denouement coming a mile off.

Throughout Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography offers one breathtaking vista after another, while Carter Burwell’s musical score ranges from the giddily parodic to the sincerely epic.

No great morals are reaffirmed, no seething drama presented.  But fun?  Oh, yes, there’s plenty of that.

| Robert W. Butler