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The Coen brothers latest film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is, nominally, a Western. But, this being the Coen brothers, it's also, in places, a musical, a horror, and a heist movie. There's even, if you squint a bit, a tiny bit of romance on offer.
Love's not the over-riding theme though. No danger of that. Disloyalty, opportunism, morbidity, death, and murder all feature far more prominently. It doesn't seem to matter much if you're good or bad in the world of the Coens. If a bullet's got your name on it, it's got your name on it.
Often the twists are pretty dark but the film itself is sumptuously shot, making great use of the wide open vistas of the American west. This can give it an otherworldly air, one that is only intensified by the Coen brothers penchant for the weird, and their exquisite attention to detail.
It's not one story, but a selection box of tales. A portmanteau presented to us in the form of the flicked pages of a dusty old tome with a color-plate introducing each individual segment. None are bad but some work better than others, as is the nature with these type of films. Films we see less of in the multiplexes these days.
As the movie progresses the stories get, for the most part, darker. That's saying something considering the first two sections include Tim Blake Nelson as a sharp-shooting, homicidal Roy Rogers gone bad cowboy, singing and killing his way through bars and poker halls. He yodels deep into Monument Valley (not a euphemism for cunnilingus) and leads rowdy saloons in singalongs about vanquished foes but, despite the violence, it's played pretty much for laughs.
James Franco, in Near Algodones, gets the film's biggest laugh though - and it comes when he's got a noose around his neck. That's not too surprising. Franco spends a fair amount of his screen time waiting to hang after a botched bank robbery, running into murderous Comanche 'injuns', and either double crossing someone or being double crossed.
There's certainly a lot less to laugh about in Meal Ticket. Boozy Irish impresario Harrison (Liam Neeson) tours the west with his quadriplegic, and seemingly nameless, assistant (Harry Melling, Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films for you non-muggles). They rock up at various makeshift western outposts where the previously taciturn assistant, Harrison's 'turn', delivers fruity accented recitals from Shakespeare, Shelley, and even the Bible. We see Harrison passing the hat round and each night the pennies seem to amount to less than the night before. One evening, Harrison spots a frenzied crowd virtually throwing money at a rival carnival barker who's got a chicken that can do sums. What to do?
If Harrison and his turn appear to live a lonely life it's as nothing compared to Tom Waits' grizzled prospector, in All Gold Canyon. He lives off fish he's caught in a babbling brook, and eggs he's pilfered from the nest of a great horned owl. The owl, a splendid deer, butterfly, and fish all share the valley with Waits' unnamed gold digger and the verdant paradise stands at odds with the greedy humanity that will soon despoil it.
This section is particularly captivating visually. When I was a kid they used to show Disney programmes on television which mixed clips with the films we all knew and loved (Dumbo, Bambi, Lady and the Tramp) with scenes from the great American wilderness and clips from sanitised imaginings of Mark Twain novels. All Gold Canyon reminded me of that. I half expected Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer to come sailing up the river in threadbare straw hats biting into juicy red apples.
In The Gal Who Got Rattled, Zoe Kazan plays Alice Longabaugh. Alice sets off with her brother Gilbert (Jefferson Mays) and his dog, the excellently named President Pierce, on a wagon train to Oregon. Along the way they're beset by disease, tomahawk welding Indian war parties, and the prospect of a very uncertain future once they arrive in the Beaver State. There's also a will they/won't they love story that sits at odds with the rest of the film, even if it is resolved in a typically bizarre fashion.
The final segment, The Mortal Remains, features a Frenchman, an Irishman, an Englishman, and an American, and a lady in a stagecoach. Although that may sound like a premise for a joke, it turns out be anything but. The American (Chelcie Ross) is a tedious trapper, the Frenchman (Saul Rubinek) seems to operate as a professional know-it-all, and the Lady (Tyne Daly, Lacey in Cagney & Lacey) is a devout Christian, obviously unhappy at sharing her journey with people she considers slightly less than upstanding.
But it's the Irishman (Brendan Gleeson) and the Englishman (Jonjo O'Neill) who hold the key to this story, and possibly, the whole film. They're bounty hunters and they're escorting their latest 'cargo' to his final destination. Everyone in the stagecoach is heading to Fort Morgan in Colorado, a desolate and creepy place, but are they also, perhaps, all on their final journey?
There's a lot of death in this film and if you were looking to find a thread to wind through the entire film it'd be the mortal coil of life itself. The stagecoach to Fort Morgan appears to have crossed the Rainbow Bridge and, the Coen brothers insinuate, we all must take this journey one day. We'll all ride that last train to glory, we'll all join the whisperers down in Davy Jones' locker, we'll all assume room temperature.
It's not the Coen brothers best film (far from it, why would it be? Death rarely is the best thing that happens to us in our lives) but it's a worthy addition to a canon that has long been equal to any of that in all film making, and if we are to come to terms with crossing the Jordan, hopping on the last rattler, or being promoted to glory then we may as well do it with it a smile on our face and a song in our hearts. That's what Buster Scruggs himself would say. In a brief respite from shooting a man's fingers individually clean off.
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