logo

“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is deliciously misanthropic, despite the Coen Brothers’ protesting otherwise

Sep 21, 2020 | Matthewrozsa

I’m not a fan of Westerns, but I loved “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.”

To understand my reluctance to embrace Westerns, check out this piece I wrote for Salon three years ago in which I compared the cinematic genre to superhero movies. Like superhero flicks, Westerns tend to follow the same formula beat-for-beat and have limited capacity to create three dimensional characters. There are some exceptions to this rule — Logan, Black Panther, Captain America: The Winter Soldier — but generally speaking, it is safe to say that if you’ve seen one superhero movie, you’ve seen them all.

The same seems to be true with Westerns, at least based on my moviegoing experience. For every flick that breaks beyond the limitations of the genre and becomes truly great — think Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, John Wayne in The Searchers or the bleakly cynical High Noon — there are countless others in which the elements are all the same. There are shootouts, saloons, comely damsels, grizzled cowboys, stereotypically hostile Native Americans and a three act “hero’s arc.” Ho-hum stuff, especially when we have genre fare today with better action sequences and special effects.

“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” avoids this pitfall by telling six mostly unrelated stories that exist to make dark jokes about the human condition. If there is a common thread linking the tales, it can be found in the opening monologue if its titular character. After listing some of his favorite nicknames, Scruggs objects to being labeled as a “misanthrope,” no doubt a reference to the critics who frequently describe the Coen Brothers’ movies with that same adjective.

“Misanthrope? I don’t hate my fellow man, even when he’s tiresome and surly and tries to cheat at poker. I figure that’s just a human material, and him that finds in it cause for anger and dismay is just a fool for expecting better.”

In other words, the Coen Brothers’ philosophy seems to be that people are petty and selfish, the world is cruel and stupid, and honestly admitting to these facts is better than playing the fool. If the consequence is being viewed as hating humanity, so be it.

From an artistic standpoint, of course, it doesn’t ultimately matter whether the Coen Brothers’ are correct in their thesis that people suck and life is a bitch until you die. The important question is whether they use that assumption to tell good stories — and the answer, resoundingly, is yes.

The following list lists the “Buster Scruggs” segments from best to worst, with an eye toward avoiding spoilers while explaining why even the least of the lot are worth checking out.

  1. Near Algodones – This is a simple story, starring James Franco and Stephen Root, about a bank robber who faces unexpected life or death consequences for his actions. The entire plot could be recounted as a simple joke, right down to the fact that its climax is a two-word punchline. It may seem counterintuitive to place such a rudimentary story at the top of the list, but if you have a dark sense of humor — especially about whether “justice” is anything more than an abstract concept in this country — you will find this one packed with laughs.
  2. The Mortal Remains — Another simple story, it is set predominantly on a stagecoach where a trapper, a poker player and a devoutly Christian old woman talk to a pair of bounty hunters dropping off a corpse. This is one of those stories where you sense something sinister is actually happening in the subtext even if it is never directly mentioned by any of the characters. The closest hint to an “answer” to the story’s underlying mystery is a glimpse of a page in a book. Each tale in “Buster Scruggs” begins with a page in an old book with text that introduces the upcoming events. If you read that page for “The Mortal Remains,” a big piece of the puzzle will fall into place.
  3. All Gold Canyon — An adaptation of a classic short story by Jack London (best known for writing “White Fang” and “The Call of the Wild”), “All Gold Canyon” is fascinating simply as a procedural about how Western prospectors used simple tools to pan for gold. Visually it is the most beautifully shot of the stories in “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” and its underlying message about the value of hard work — that is, whether hard work has any practical value at all — can keep you debating for hours.
  4. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs — The opening segment of the movie is also the one most like a traditional “Western,” at least in the sense that it has saloons, gambling, shootouts and all the other accoutrements associated with the genre. Tim Blake Nelson (who was also in the Coen Brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) is perfectly cast as a cheerful cowpoke who is nevertheless far deadlier than any of the other gunslingers he encounters. The episode’s shocking ending doesn’t so much subvert the traditional Western formula as arrive at a mournful conclusion about its deeper philosophical implications.
  5. Meal Ticket — Whenever I’ve seen this movie with friends, this is the story that they all identify as most upsetting. There is no gore and the sex scene is done so tastefully (indeed, with a deliberate lack of eroticism) that there is nothing inappropriate about it. The ending, though, is so cruel and merciless that no one who I have talked to has been unaffected by it. While Liam Neeson is the more famous actor in the story, Harry Melling steals the show as an intellectual born without arms or legs who is exploited to perform in cheap shows while, as he puts it, “I sit all alone and cry about the fact that I’m an outcast, and bother God with useless cries, which fall on deaf ears, and look at myself and curse my fate.” That is a quote from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, but boy does it work for this character.
  6. The Gal Who Got Rattled — I still enjoyed the little details that made this story historically accurate — it shows a young woman (Zoe Kazan) as she makes her way across the Oregon trail — and it has a sweet love story at its core, as well as a gut punch of a twist ending. At the same time, this one feels padded, with long stretches of dialogue or pauses in the pacing that add very little.