![]() Harrison doesn’t have arms or legs and performs speeches and Shakespeare as the Impresario travels through towns to make money. There are two characters, the Impresario (Liam Neeson) and his actor Harrison (Harry Melling). This story was by far the most haunting and probably my most favorite. Some of that tribe’s story could have been explored in this but instead Franco’s character just takes the long way around to finally getting hung. They are all from the perspective of the privileged old west, which does have intriguing stories, but the Natives are only ever antagonists or in the case of this story, indifferent. This was the story that made me wish we’d gotten the Native story in these tales. This is the young cowboy’s second hanging and the one where he finally dies. Another band of thieves takes him and and they are caught and brought to town to be hung. He fails and is about to be hung by local law enforcement, when some Native Americans attack and leave him to die. The story follows a young cowboy (James Franco) who is attempting to rob an isolated bank. This is a story of desperation and lack of luck where every situation leads to a worse one. This story is comparable to “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” in how absurd it is, though it differs in that it doesn’t have the joy of that story. The cinematography is beautiful, the music is great and if we’d had more time with characters it could have been a perfect Musical Western. This is what makes his death tragic, but he does get to go to Heaven and gets angel wings, so his story isn’t entirely tragic…especially compared to the stories that come up later. He is fun and funny and even though is willing to kill always treats people as a good person first and always has a song on his lips. This one was great as a musical and I love Tim Blake Nelson’s energy as Buster Scruggs. It finally all comes to a head when the Man in Black finds him and it is the duel he finally loses, that brings his story to an end. The story follows Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) the Gunslinger as he goes about from town to town, taking out people who challenge him. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is one of the happiest of the tales, as even though death and destruction happen, Buster Scruggs always has a song on his lips and his sheer joy rubs off on the events throughout the story. I’m judging each story individually before an overall take on the whole, since though they are each connected in theme, it is still an anthology film. ![]() ![]() ![]() The name of the anthology also is the name of the first story within the anthology itself. ![]() Each story is haunted with tales of death and destruction as all are faced with choices told in a storybook fashion. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is a Western anthology that follows the tales of the gunslinger, the thief, the conman, the prospector, the cowboy and the bounty hunter. Lately they’ve been doing more collaborations but this is wholly a Coen Brothers film as they wrote, produced and directed this film. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is certainly up there with those films, but doesn’t quite reach their level of perfection. “Fargo,” “Blood Simple” and “The Big Lewbowski” are some of my favorite films of all time and I love the desolation and farcical nature that is brought to so many of their dramas. ![]()
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