Review of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Coen brother's Netflix film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, moves from the humorous to the profound, but also, as others have pointed out, from a romanticized version of passage to the afterlife to a chillingly serious one. **Spoiler warning**

It is beautifully produced. All the scenes are splendidly shot and the acting is perfect. Despite being composed of six stories of varying lengths, the film coheres. The film could firstly be read as a somewhat cynical, albeit well-rounded tribute to the western genre in all its diversity, since the main characters are often anti-heros, and the stories are all haunted by tragedy: the normal order of things is often reversed. However, just as the book of Revelation refers to essentially every book of the Old Testament, but almost never with direct quotes and nearly always with modification and re-contextualization, so the Coen brothers do the same with Westerns, attempting a metareading of the genre. The effect of this technique is to revivify old stories, and explain something that was always implicit in the genre, but never explicitly addressed or fully explored. It reorganizes the disparate parts and convoluted histories as one, capturing all the complexity with a single kaleidoscopic twist.

I'll start with a basic outline of the stories.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The deadly gunman Buster Scruggs, always cheating death, but is outwitted at the end. In keeping with his character, his spirit sprouts wings and gains a harp as he flies into the clouds.

Near Algodones
A desperate bank robber attempts to rob a bank, but is thwarted by the homegrown, though effective defenses of the bank clerk. Captured and about to hang, he is saved by the intervention of an Indian war party, who kill the hanging party, but leave him seated on the horse. He's saved again by a cattle rustler, but then both are captured and hung.

Meal Ticket
An artist Harrison, gifted with an impressive voice, but without arms or legs, recites famous pieces of literature to crowds, earning money for himself and his companion, who cares for him. But his popularity wanes as they move from town to town, and his companion (brother?) rose up, as in the story of Cain he recites, killing him by throwing him off a bridge, after having bought a chicken that can do sums, which draws larger crowds.

All Gold Canyon
A prospector enters a beautiful valley, and tracks down a pocket of gold. A somewhat odd, and, for the purposes of the plot, completely unnecessary scene occurs when the prospector climbs a tree and takes an egg from a bird nest (but only one, not all four). When he finds the gold, however, a thief, who has been waiting for this moment, shoots him as he is examining his find. Although the thief waits to make certain the prospector is dead, when he jumps into the hole, the prospector turns on him and kills him: the gunshot was not fatal. After taking the gold, the prospector throws the thief into the hole and leaves.

The Gal Who Got Rattled
A brother and sister are traveling the Oregon trail to meet the brother's business partner, with perhaps a plan for her to marry the partner. The brother dies, leaving money owing to a hired hand. (The brother also leaves a dog that annoys everyone with its barking, and the sister gives permission for it to be shot, but the dog escapes). Although somewhat uncertain of what to do, her problems are apparently solved when one of the leaders of the wagon train, Billy Knapp, offers to marry her and assume the debt to the hired hand. The sister wanders away from the train during the day to find the dog, and Mr Arthur, the wagon train leader, goes to look for her. They are attacked by Indians, and Mr Arthur tells the sister to shoot herself if he dies, so she will not be captured and tortured by the Indians. Unfortunately, she sees him fall, struck by an Indian tomahawk, and shoots herself ... but he is not actually dead and wins the skirmish. Mr Arthur has no idea what he will say to Billy Knapp.

The Mortal Remains
Five passengers are traveling to Fort Morgan in the coach. Conversation ensues, with the topics ranging from emotional expression, to types of people (upright or sinning, dead or alive), to love and certainty, and finally to revealing that two passengers are bounty hunters, and are responsible for the body on top of the coach. The conversation ends with one of the bounty hunters explaining that he loves to watch his victims try to make sense of passing from this life to the next. The story closes with the passengers entering the doors of the hotel.

The final story is the book, which contains the above stories, being read by the viewer.

The Coen brothers being who they are, the plots are often stood on their head. Thus, the comedy story ends with death (The Gal Who Got Rattled), the white cowboy loses to the black, and there is no return from the final voyage (death). The film can be taken as a series of stories about people who live meaningful lives, but ultimately, in the face of death, the meaning of their lives become questionable (the first five stories end with the death of the protagonist, while in the remaining one the death of a secondary character colours the entire story). Uncertainty is a major theme of the film, summed up by Billy Knapp when he says "Uncertainty. That is appropriate for matters of this world. Only regarding the next are vouchsafed certainty." Despite the lack of neatness, however, all lives have meaning, though it is difficult to see, most especially because death obscures meaning so effectively.

This search for meaning is a problem for modern culture, for reasons best explained by Andrew Klavan, who points out that the opening song, Cool Water, very possibly refers to part of The Waste Land by TS Eliot:

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Both Eliott and the song echo Psalm 42:2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God, and as Klavan says "Elliot was talking about the absence of faith in the absence of baptism (which ultimately Elliott found, he found his faith and he was baptized, became a member of the Church of England). And when you watch this film, the stories progress from that yearning for water and sort of funny and hilarious meditation on death and the afterlife through a beautiful, beautiful discussion of certainty in the story about the wagon train." The song also refers to a green tree planted by a stream, a metaphor for the Church, used throughout the Bible, and also a reference to the Tree of Life, the crucified Christ. However, the only really prominent tree of the film is a hanging tree. Thus, the film is set in the barren wasteland of the wild west without faith.

Thus, it is impossible to comment on this film without referring to the dominant view of death and the afterlife in our culture. Western culture is atheistic and anti-supernatural, and rejects any idea of the afterlife as therapeutic superstition. Any consciousness of death is suppressed as far as possible, with such things as consumerism, which attempts to distract us with material comforts, environmentalism, which offers a pseudo-transcendent meaning to life by referring to something of value beyond ourselves (completely forgetting that (at least without God) it is humans that create value, and without them, this planet means absolutely nothing), and the transformation of funerals into a celebration of life. We indulge ourselves with romantic ideas that everyone goes to a good place when they die, though they have no reason to believe in life after death and certainly no reason to know what counts as good and evil in such an imaginary afterlife, since they can't decide on what counts as good and evil in this world (for very good reasons, outlined by, for instance, Alisdair MacIntyre in After Virtue).

The problem thus posed for artists who want to make a serious comment on death and the afterlife is that they face a very cynical audience. Shmaltz, the standard popular Christian response, certainly won't do, and cynicism, humour and irony are overused, not to mention the nub of the whole problem, and are ultimately unsatisfying. The Coen brothers address this by starting out with a fair amount of black humour, which becomes simultaneously blacker and more serious as the film progresses. Black humour serves two purposes here. One is to make the bitter pills somewhat easier to swallow, but also serves to highlight, as starkly as possible, that humans always fall short of who they should be. Death is the heftiest punchline to these jokes, because we were not intended to die.

It makes sense that there's a movement of time of day and season throughout the film. The first story starts in the bright morning sun with Buster Scruggs, moving through the zenith of the prospector's story, through the afternoon of the Oregon trail to end in the night of the last coach ride. It isn't particularly clear what season the first two stories are, but given the amount of sunlight, summer seems likely. After that, however, the stories move through winter (Meal Ticket), spring (All Gold Canyon), summer (The Gal Who Got Rattled) and autumn (The Mortal Remains). This is matched by the growth of plants, from the brilliant green of spring, through to the golden prairies ready for harvesting to the autumn, when harvesting occurs. The waning light and fading year fit the coming of death, but also hint at the morning and spring.

Before concluding, a digression, just for fun, with a few different outlines. A chiastic outline answers the humor of the first story with solemnity of the last, and draws attention to the uncertainty of when death will strike, and it isn't always who you expect. The theme of money, particularly how it is gained and motivates people also contrasts between the two halves of the story.

A Sentimental version of the afterlife
  B Death of a guilty man; money by stealing
    C Death of a helpless man for money; river of death
    C` Helpless man escapes death, hale one dies for gold; river of gold
  B` Death of an innocent woman; money by honesty
A` Sombre version of the afterlife

A repeating outline draws attention to the characters of the tricksters and storytellers, and Indians, which play the role of unexpected twists of fortune.

A Trickster tricked
  B Indians sort-of save man from death
    C Storyteller gives life but dies
A` Honest man out-tricks thief
  B` Indians cause death of woman
    C` Storyteller brings death and lives

For fun, I lined up seven types of plots, and some medieval ideas about the planets with the seven stories. The planets fit well, but two plots don't - the voyage and return, and the rebirth.
Buster Scruggs, the gunman terrorizing town is gunned down: Mars (Overcoming the Monster)
Bank robber: Mercury, god of merchants and thieves (Rags to Riches)
Performer, the actor is betrayed by his brother, struck mad: Moon, goddess of mutability (Voyage and return)
Prospector, looks for the golden metal: Sun (The Quest)
Oregan trail, the romance: Venus (Comedy)
Coach, the passage to the underworld: Saturn (Tragedy)
Omniscient viewer, has their perspective on death challenged, and perhaps changed: Jupiter, the kingly planet (Rebirth)

And let's add a few random observations: The shot of the hanging tree in the second story is undoubtedly a reference to the World Tree, such as that in Norse mythology, whose roots descend to the underworld and branches reach to heaven (this is also the Tree of Life, which is why Vikings sacrificed humans by hanging them on trees). The bank robber, then, experiences a sort of rebirth, but Fortuna cheats him of that also.

In the fourth story, egg-hunting bears some resemblance to gold prospecting; both are looking for well-hidden gold things. (An interesting aside is when the prospector is taking the egg, he makes a comment doubting whether a bird can count; the previous episode has a chicken that can supposedly count). The prospector's valley possibly refers to Sick Heart River, a novel by John Buchan about death and visiting a beautiful valley in Quebec.

End of digression.

The overarching theme of the film, certainty, is cast in ultimate terms: the certainty of death, and the uncertain vaguaries of life and when death will strike.  Repetition is used to great effect in the film, especially in the two middle stories, driving home the liturgical aspect of our humanity, with recitations of poetry, and steady searching for gold. The regularities of our life all suffer one great interruption. The dice has been thrown, you are alive and there is no second chance; what will you do with the cards you have been dealt (refuse to play, like Buster Scruggs - in which case, you die)? Each story provides a different response to death, but only the last is especially satisfying. The responses move from romantic humor, to stoic black humor, to tragic outrage, righteous anger, sadness and finally, the certainty of judgment. All of the first five stories end with the finality of death, but also some sense that material death is not quite the end; they don't feel as if the reactions we experience properly resolve the tensions created. The resolution is only reached in the final story, where, from the IMDB plot synopsis, "As the trip progresses it slowly becomes evident that their stagecoach is headed to the 'end-of-the-line' - the last roundup." Like death, the coach driver stops for no one. The two bounty hunters are autumn angels of death, harvesting souls, one of whom has a creepy fascination with watching death:

Englishman: I must say... it's always interesting watching them after Clarence has worked his art. Watching them negotiate... the passage.
Frenchman: Passage?
Englishman: From here to there. To the other side. Watching them try to make sense of it, as they pass to that other place. I do like looking into their eyes as they try to make sense of it.
Englishman: I do. [stares at the Frenchman]
Englishman: I do. [stares at the Lady]
Trapper: Try to make sense of what?
Englishman: All of it.  [stares at the Trapper]
Lady: And do they ever... succeed?
Englishman: [smiles] How would I know? I'm only watching!

By the end of the film, the Coen brothers have driven home the point that all these stories are interesting and have meaning. To quote Klavan one last time, the film "finally ends ... with a depiction of the doors of death. And if you look closely, you'll see on one of the doors there is an angel, and one of them there is a satanic and goat clearly indicating that there is judgment and an afterlife." As the hotel doors close with a boom, the film leaves us with no uncertainty that death is not the end, but only a beginning. In our materialistic world, I think that's a good intuition to resurrect.