The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: The Absurdity of Mankind

Last night I was reading up on The Myth of Sisyphus, an essay that posits Albert Camus' philosophy of the absurd and man's futile search for meaning. Then this morning, I watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the latest Coen Brothers film that is essentially a visual depiction of absurdism. I did not plan this, but my it was a revelation.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a series of short films that all take place in the old American West. The conceit is that you are reading a book called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier and an unseen hand turns the pages to introduce each new story and then show you the closing pages as you move on to the next vignette. That flourish made me glad I was watching on Netflix as I could pause the movie and read the last few words of every story to glean some more wisdom from the mysterious minds of Joel and Ethan Coen.

I won't delve into too much detail about each of the vignettes as they pack a wallop and should be experienced firsthand. But if you've ever watched a Coen Brothers movie before, you know what you will find. A bewildering mix of comedy and pathos, with dialogue that falls trippingly off the tongue and makes you want to write it all down so you can read those sentences over and over again. I simply do not understand how they can craft such poetry but every word is a delight. Most importantly, every actor they've hired delivers those lines with the appropriate panache. However, that is only the case in some of the stories. In others, dialogue takes a backseat to Bruno Delbonnel's epic cinematography where Nature provides the necessary poetry. The pristine landscapes and wilds of the frontier are jawdroppingly splendid and highlight the absurdity of it all. These men will play their foolish games to their foolish ends but the land will carry on long after they are gone.

Be warned: this movie is a Western and extremely violent and graphic in spots, oftentimes becoming Tarantino-esque. If bloodshed and bullet wounds turn your stomach, you might want to skip some stories entirely. But each one has one central thesis: men are constantly searching for something, and ultimately, it doesn't matter whether or not they get it. The journey is the destination. As Camus said, "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." And you will really have to stretch your imagination because happy endings are not plentiful in this film.

Of the six vignettes, I naturally gravitated to the only one featuring a meaty role for a woman, The Gal Who Got Rattled. (One could argue that in the Wild West women didn't do much, but we all know that's a paltry argument and is my main quibble with this film - if you have six stories, can't some of them feature more interesting roles for women?) Zoe Kazan's performance is captivating, and the camera lingers on her face even when others are talking because getting her reaction to their words is more important than watching the words be delivered. This vignette felt the most sweet and hopeful...for a while at least. I also enjoyed Near Algodones, starring James Franco, as that featured some of the most outright absurdist comedy (Franco is not allowed to mumble more than a few words during the entire piece as that man is impossible to imagine as a cowboy). And for utter bleak despair, Liam Neeson and Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley's all grown up and magnificent in this role!) deliver quite the gut punch in Meal Ticket.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a cinematic feast, offering an amuse bouche to tickle every palate, but with a central theme of utter Sisyphean futility. It is beautifully shot, impeccably written, and well acted. I can't say it is a warm and fuzzy holiday movie, but it certainly shows you what cinema can do to transform the written word into a moving spectacle.