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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2. One way into Buster Scruggs is to remember Coens' last film "Hail, Caesar" -- an ode to classic Hollywood (including the Western genre) but filled with foreboding that film itself was an art that was about to become obsolete.
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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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Jeet Heer Retweeted Tero Kuittinen
8. This is (SPOILER ALERT), a fair reading of the segment titled "Meal Ticket":https://twitter.com/teroterotero/status/1064256940233113600 …
Jeet Heer added,
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Repitition of Ozymandious and Gettsyburg Address made it feel like it was more contemporary political critique, but that seems unlike Coens.
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No, I think the politics are there
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