The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

2018, Coen Bros (No Country for Old Men) -- Netflix

When this movie hit Netflix, I was already deeply embedded in Old West milieu, having been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 since my birthday, a video game that is best described as Grand Theft Auto in the Old West, but much more immersive. Thus, this movie and all its lovingly depicted westerns tropes was like slipping sugar cubes to my horse. Or would that be "being slipped sugar cubes by my horse" ? No, that's just weird. Anwayz, it was sweet and made me smile.

Being an anthology, each vignette explores and up-ends common story types and tropes of standard western movies. Some are funny, some are chilling and some are tragic... scratch that, they are all rather tragic in their own way.  Most are original stories written by the Coens, while two are based on Jack London story and a short story by Stuart Edward White, an American author who wrote out-doorsy fiction (hunting, survival, guns) in the early 20th century.

I don't really want to summarize each but we get a tale of a singing cowboy, that smacks of 30s serials; we get a prospector story, a tale of settlers heading west, a vision of Old West entertainment, a bank robbery, and finally a chilling stage coach ride. Each story grabbed something I remember from all those westerns, even the ones I only flicked past, channel surfing on Saturday afternoons. About the only thing missing was a scene shot in those famous California rocks, yes the big leaning ones where they also shot original series Star Trek.

The joy of watching a Coen Bros movie is watching craftsmen at work. The script is always so them in the writing and in the dialogue ("pan shot!!"). The characters are often quirky, which I love, but every actor just seems so deeply absorbed in their role. Take Tim Blake Nelson, not the prettiest man, but I completely believe him as the singing cowboy in the opening piece. Generally, in the original serials this one inspired, those men were square jawed, handsome devils but Nelson is so immersed as cheerful singing gunslinger, I couldn't help but accept it. The Coens make me believe.

Of particular note to me were the segments "The Gal Who Got Rattled" and "All Gold Canyon". It was the dialogue and the performances that did it for me; the conversations between Billy Knap and Ms. Longabaugh so polite and filled with propriety, in the former, and in the latter, the prospector played by Tom Waits talking to himself and his soon to be discovered gold.

I have recently completed RDR2 and I cannot help but still compare this movie to it. A world emersed video game, with primary story but tons of side stories, gives you a lot of vignettes from which to build the greater world your character inhabits. Some are straight forward, revenge, redemption, hunting, skill advancement while others are just solely quirky story telling. I cannot help now but wish the Coens would have written some of the segments of the game and furthered my enjoyment of it.