1. "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is catnip for Coen fans but (I suspect) a challenging film for more general viewers. It mixes hilarity with horror in Coen-esque way that is an acquired taste. It's a death-saturated Western, perhaps haunted by fear that cinema is dying.
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3. In "Hail. Caesar" a Lockheed executive tries to convince Hollywood fixer Eddie Mannix that movies are on the way out: "It’s a new age, Mannix, and we’re part of it; the industry you’re in—what’s the future there? What happens when everybody owns a television set?"
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4. Having anticipated TV replacing film in "Hail, Caesar" the Coens have now made a movie for Netflix -- it has a limited theatrical release but let's face it, most people are going to see it on TV. Yet "Buster Scruggs" continues "Hail, Caesar's" tribute to Hollywood.
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5. "Hail, Caesar" had a singing cowboy (Hobie Doyle, winningly played by Alden Ehrenreich), a character-type that returns in "Buster Scruggs" but in a more sinister & violent form. So: a continued tribute classic Hollywood but with a harsher satirical edge.
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6. Whereas the western segment of "Hail, Caesar!" revelled in the simple charm of the singing cowboy, "Buster Scruggs" gives generic forms but without generic comforts. It's as bloody as a western but in cruel, punitive universe that punishes guild & innocence alike.
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7. The segments making up "Buster Scruggs" feature generic tropes & situations (shootout, new kid challenging old gunslinger, prospector, Oregon trial, stagecoach) -- the novelty comes from harsh, fast, unexpected & often amoral (even flippant) killings. Movie is a memento mori.
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8. This is (SPOILER ALERT), a fair reading of the segment titled "Meal Ticket":https://twitter.com/teroterotero/status/1064256940233113600 …
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9. The Western genre has threaded through the Coens' career, even in movies that aren't explicitly Western (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, No Country, Hail Caesar). So this film is also a call back to their career (especially True Grit) as well as classic Hollywood.
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10. Like all the good Coen films (they're batting .944 right now) it'll repay revisiting & discussion. My colleague
@Jo_Livingstone has some thoughts on films debt to earlier Hollywood:https://newrepublic.com/article/152263/ballad-buster-scruggs-coen-brothers-odd-paean-western …Show this thread
End of conversation
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Which segment did you like best?
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