Review of "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" by the Coen brothers: a totally dispensable film

The Coen brothers are back but this time on Netflix. No theatrical release for their new feature film: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs despite an imposing cast with Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Brendan Gleeson or Liam Neeson. A film composed of short films set in the Wild West. Six stories independent of each other.

The Coen brothers lazy?

Sketch films are sometimes successful. Just dive back into Damian Szifron's excellent The New Savages to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes it doesn't work like the disappointing Les Infidèles. And sometimes it's half-fig, half-grape like the latest of the Coen brothers. We obviously find their dough of directors, and especially screenwriters. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs proves that Netflix does not necessarily standardize the image of its productions, the color, the grain, or even the staging as many detractors have raised. It is true that generally, from one Netflix film to another we find the same identity, just to set up a graphic charter specific to the platform. Fortunately, sometimes works break this habit like the superb Okja, or like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. However, the Coen brothers' production has been more brilliant than the latter in the past. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is not detestable, is visually superb thanks to the sets of deep America, but it lacks the usual verve of the duo, their offbeat, precise and always amazing staging. It's as if the Coen brothers were playing it lazy.

But the writing of the characters exudes the style of the Coens. They once again feature magnificent losers, characters on the margins, tossed around by existence, who try to find their place and achieve a complex goal. As often they are amazing protagonists, who differ from the norm. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is practically a musical. In any case, the film breathes music and singing in the image of their O'Brother or the recent Inside Llewyn Davis.

A definitely uneven film

Unfortunately The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is necessarily an uneven film, whose stories are not all of the same quality level. Some soap operas are nuggets of scriptwriting like the tale of this old man looking for gold, or when James Franco has the rope at the blow. Others go on too long, like this episode about Alice Longabaugh's wedding, caught up in a thunderous finale. Finally, we have the impression of seeing relatively tired, or lazy, Coen brothers, who boil down to little stories that lack madness, connected to each other by a most simplistic montage. A kind of modern account of an obsolete America, which stands up through an open book whose pages scroll on the screen. We knew more original as editing and transitions. Anyway the Coen brothers still give something new to see but The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is light years away from No country for old man, True Grit or even O'Brother in the register of western, whether comedy or drama.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an opportunity to see a succession of uneven scenes that fail to find a general identity. The adventures are linked lazily without any real goal to achieve other than the presentation of life in the Far West. Not necessarily always very funny or exciting, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs will certainly remain a minor film of the Coen brothers.