Netflix Mini-Review - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (15)

I got to set myself up in the undertakin' business. Stop doin' all the skill work so another man can profit.

The Gist: The ballad in question makes up one sixth of this western anthology from Joel and Ethan Coen. Yes - half a dozen tales of America's 19th century New Frontier are told here, as though we're leafing through the same beautifully bound and archaic volume of stories. It begins with Buster Scruggs himself (Tim Blake Nelson), a singing cowboy who's lethally quick on the draw. Scruggs' tunefully violent adventure preps us for what's in store... The tone may vary, but these narratives - whether of a bank robber's bad day, an obsessive gold prospector or a slow-burn wagon train romance - are all heavy with mortality and a sense of how brutally unpredictable life can be. 

The Juice: This is the American West, Coen Brothers style, and it helps to be savvy regarding that style going in. For thirty-five years this fraternal duo has been making movies about movies - their tales part parody, part homage to existing film genres, but never without an eccentricity all their own. The classic westerns of Howard Hawks and John Ford (shot through with the flinch-worthy violence of Sam Peckinpah) provide their starting point here. A Best Original Screenplay nomination at this year's Oscars was well-earned; The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has all the wit, pith and philosophy that Coen fans will expect, their relish in the western idiom resulting in dialogue chewy as tobacco from an idiosyncratic cast of characters. Their command of storytelling is on full display too - both in some tales' sense of fatalism and the blindsiding twists of others. As ever there's a formidable battery of acting talent, with Nelson's eponymous sharp-shooter, Zoe Kazan's demure spinster and Tom Waits' mad-eyed prospector only three gems among many. Add to that cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel's eye for those rugged locations and Carter Burwell's elegaic score and you have yourself one well-honed compendium of Wild West fiction, skewed by that unmistakable Ethan&Joel style. 

The Judgement: 8.5/10. While it starts off like one of the Coens' more lightweight offerings (the actual Buster Scruggs bit is an extended albeit hilarious joke), this deepens and darkens as it proceeds, gaining ever-greater dramatic weight. The storybook West is a perfect backdrop for this meditation on human frailty, with the final two tales - one sober, one grimly funny - bringing the point home. It's unforgiving stuff, but redeemed by intelligence, humour and the sheer craft on display. Coens and cowboys - they were destined to make great art together, even if it's resolutely downbeat. Saddle up for a bumpy cross-prairie ride.