The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Very weak Coens, hopefully they pick the weaker moment for the future. The stories are completely without a twist, there is only the adorable finger-shooting in the first one, the beautiful scenery in the one with the charismatic vagabond Watts, and here and there a typical Coen joke, but there are so few of them that they could be counted on the fingers of one hand of a sawmill worker. What I admire most about the Coens is the biting, caustic, ironic humour, which here is almost non-existent. Then the fifth and longest story is almost unbearable, it doesn't go anywhere, it's just such a cry into the wind and I have to repeat it again, without a single twist. (30/12/2018)

The Coen brothers have always had their own specific approach to storytelling and this short-story western is no different. The beginning, for instance, is an exemplary bliss. Buster Scruggs is a character you simply have to love because the things he does in the first short story are simply badass. Coupled with the specific direction style of the Coen brothers, it’s the bomb. But then the first story ends, the second one starts and things get incredibly boring. The stories don’t follow up on one another and there aren’t any great endings that could attract your attention… the stories simply flow and the original excitement about the director’s ideas gradually fades and all you are left with is Buster Scruggs himself. (28/02/2019)

Buster Scruggs had a good line of sight, but the Coen’s were sprinkling targets with very variable success. Most of the bullets ended up in the prairie. A disparate, unbalanced anthology that is meant to recall the romantic charm of westerns and the West, which has never been. Instead, it reminds us that the Coen’s are no longer masters of tonal equilibristics, eccentric dialogues and brilliant points. This film plays more on sentiment rather than skillfully creating it. Some short stories (trunk, gold digger) are downright awful and out of rhythm. Even though the moods change here, the overall impression is insanely monotonous, also because the Coen’s only vary safely. In the end, I remember with love the demented version of Lemonade Joe, the hangman blues of James Franco and the dog ballad... the rest is not even worth a spit into the dust. (25/11/2018)

The Coens may have a lot of filmmaking years under their belt, but reviving a half-dead genre and enriching it with a short story style is a very good idea and definitely makes for good entertainment. The first two stories are absolute carnage and the best of the western genre of the last ten years, with no sparing of black-sarcastic humour and a decent dose of violence, so I think it's a great pity that the remaining four short stories are much slower (I'd skip the third and sixth altogether). The fourth one impresses with the idea, the setting and the surprising finale, and the fifth one has a slower pace, but the action-packed ending is satisfying enough including an unexpected twist. Overall, then, I'm satisfied, it's playful, absurd, gritty, funny and smart enough to keep the viewer's attention, but if the whole film had stuck to the opening two stories, we'd be talking about the best film of the year. 70% (27/11/2018)

I had to strain to think back to a time when the Coen brothers last spoke to me so strongly, and the best I could do was No Country for Old Men. Even the related genre film True Grit was not as complex and did not cover as many subgenres as this one does. I am most grateful that from the very beginning this was a film and not a series, as originally rumored in the media, before the creators themselves shut down such rumors. This is exactly how, in seemingly unrelated stories bound by death, two hours, and a formal reading from a book, it clearly resonates how cruel, hopeless, and infinitely romantic life in the Wild West must have been. (24/10/2019)

Great. It seems to me, according to the feedback from the world and the database here, that the Coens have been making films mostly for themselves and me in recent years. But why would I mind that? Every short story was something different, and each was great. There was typical humor in unpredictable situations as well as melancholy thinking about people and about life, and I certainly don't agree that the short stories didn't have points, because they did. Just maybe they weren't as evident and literal as people would have liked. Yes, I thought that the gold-digger story with Tom Waits would be the last and that it would be a beautiful ending, but then, after it ended, the next one started and then came the last one (typical Coen anecdote), and I certainly didn't mind. (10/12/2018)

Les six sketchs de ce western d’anthologie signé Coen brothers valent la peine en soi, mais ils ne sont pas liés entre eux et leur combinaison peut frustrer légèrement à cause des sautes d’humeur qu’elle implique (sans parler de la caméra numérique pour laquelle il faut un certain temps d’adaptation). Passons-les en revue depuis le début. La Ballade de Buster Scruggs : Une comédie sanglante folle et surprenante avec un hors-la-loi chanteur (Tim Blake Nelson), qui enchante tant par son humour cinglant que par les habiles répliques et chansons de son personnage principal. Je ne dirais pas non à une version plus longue. 70 %. Près d'Algodones : James Franco incarne un bandit minable dont les amusantes tentatives d’échapper à la corde conviendraient parfaitement à un long métrage et à une intrigue plus sophistiquée. L’employé de banque affublé de poêles suspendues est le point culminant du film. 70 %. Ticket repas : Il est dommage et un peu surprenant, après deux histoires qui délectent par leur humour, que les frères Coen aient assombri l’ambiance subitement et sans prévenir avec un drame plutôt déprimant. Celui-ci peut être vu comme une parabole sur la mort de l’art véritable et la substitution de ce dernier par un charlatanisme de pacotille qui se vend mieux. Intéressant, mais parfois répétitif et totalement incohérent avec le reste du film de par sa morosité. 50 %. Gorge dorée : Une histoire simple mais chaleureusement contée sur un orpailleur – incarné par un Tom Waits barbu –, filmée dans un paysage naturel de toute beauté. Jack London n’est vraiment pas loin. 65 %. La fille qui fut sonnée : Osons le dire, c’est la partie la plus intéressante et la plus Coenesque du lot en ce qui concerne l’intrigue. Ça met du temps à se construire et à présenter les personnages, mais la fin inattendue rend ce minifilm le plus impressionnant de tous. 75 %. Les Restes mortels : On termine sur une petite discussion philosophique. Sur papier, il s’agissait peut-être du final idéal, mais en réalité, c’est plutôt usant et il est vraiment dommage d’avoir eu si peu recours aux talents de Brendan Gleeson. 55 %. L’un dans l’autre, j’ai passé deux heures agréables et n’ai pas vraiment de reproches à faire (ce qui n'était pas le cas pour Ave, Caesar !, le précédent opus des frères Coen). Cela dit, on aurait gagné énormément si le fun des deux premiers sketchs avait été maintenu sur tout le film. (29/11/2018)

The idea of short western stories by the Coen brothers with a great cast seemed very appealing to me, but the result didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The extensive runtime and weird endings without much of a point didn’t help either. I’m not going to pretend I didn't have fun. I enjoyed some of the stories a lot, others considerably less. Anyway, I'm glad I saw the film, but it isn’t worth more than a slightly above-average score. /"First time?"/ 3*+ (17/08/2020)