Thread by @JuliusGoat

Has Buster Scruggs been out long enough now that I can do a massively spoiler-y thread about it?

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS is a set of six vignettes that are seen as either unrelated or related only thematically.

I think it actually tells a cohesive narrative with clear rising action, climax, and denouement. It's a masterclass of audience expectation-setting.

Let's start with the tragic climax: the battle that ends "The Gal Who Got Rattled," in which taciturn Mr Arthur successfully fends off a (rather unfortunately regressively portrayed) Sioux attack—too late for poor Alice, who assumed a different outcome, and took his grim advice.

Each of the preceding chapters—well-crafted stories in their own right, meditations on humanity’s harshness to humanity and the inevitability of death—serves to build us up to this precise moment, providing the tragedy a weight it would lack as a 30 minute stand-alone short.

Let’s start with Chapter 1: “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” We’re introduced to the titular character, a happy-go-lucky singing cowboy who also happens to be a cartoonishly ruthless and unstoppable (yet still somehow likeable) murder monster.

He’s the best there is.

We’ve no sooner established Buster as an almost impossibly hyper-competent gunslinger, however, than we meet another singing cowboy, who dispatches Buster just as easily as Buster killed his victims.

Lesson 1: Death comes for us all.
Lesson 2: There’s always somebody better.

Let’s move on to Chapter 2: “Near Algodones.” The tone is goofy, but noticeably less cartoonish than Ch 1. James Franco’s hapless criminal has one death sentence after another interrupted by yet another new death sentence.

It’s worth cataloging the sequence.

First he narrowly escapes the bank teller’s booby trap …. but is unable to finish him off (“PAN SHOT”) and is sentenced to be hung.

The hanging is interrupted by another (rather unfortunately regressively portrayed) native attack (this time Commanche), … but they leave him tied up and strung up, at the horrifying but hilarious mercy of his drifting horse.

He’s saved from this jam by a passing stranger … who happens to be a cattle rustler, and leaves him to take the fall, which means another hanging.

At this point, he seems to believe (perhaps understandably) that he’ll be saved again.

Certainly we’ve begun to expect it.

At that moment he sees a “purty girl.” The gallows door opens.

. boom dead the end

The moment he has the slightest hope of romantic love, he instantly dies.

Lesson 1: Death comes for us all.
Lesson 2: Romance will end your luck.

Moving on to Episode 3: the brutal “Meal Ticket.” The tone is noticeably less cartoonish than Ch 2. The Artist—a quadruple amputee—is carted around by his Impresario from performance to performance.

His performances are gorgeous and full of feeling. Offstage he never speaks.

The Impresario is crucially played by Liam Neeson, best known for protector roles.

We wonder about the nature of the relationship, but gradually learn that it’s the most cold-blooded possible arrangement.

The Artist is a mere possession, given less consideration than a chicken.

The silence of the Artist is revealed to be a constant terror of his keeper; no protector, but rather a man capable of murdering his ward like you’d dispose of an old tire.

Lesson 1: Death comes for us all
Lesson 2: Beauty won't save you
Lesson 3: A man kills for his livelihood

Next we have Episode 4, “All Gold Canyon.” Interestingly, the tone—which includes a rather ostentatious anthropomorphizating of the titular canyon—is slightly *more* cartoonish than Chapter 3.

Pattern ... broken.

A prospector invades paradise to despoil it treasure, and though we grow to enjoy his company, we fear what his arrival prefigures for this land.

At the end, he survives an ambush from one who would rob him with similar ruthlessness.

He ... survives.

Pattern ... broken.

At the end, he leaves, and paradise—the other subject of our concern—survives as well.

Pattern ... broken.

Earlier in this installation, there's a neat mirroring of what's just happened to us—three deaths and one survival—in the bit about the owl eggs. One egg is taken and the rest left in the nest.

Lesson: Sometimes, death comes ... but sometimes, death passes by.

Now we come to the installment the rest have been setting up.

Chapter 5, “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” is a masterpiece, but its full power relies upon what’s come before.

All the other parts work in service of this part.

Without knowing it, we’ve learned our lessons.

By “lessons,” I don’t mean life lessons, but story lessons. The film has been subtlety teaching us how to watch it.

It’s being done to let us know (with rising dread) what’s coming, but to still surprise us when it comes.

A hell of a trick.

The lessons:

We’ve learned to expect cruelty from self-interested people.

We’ve learned to expect the sudden death of our main character.

And we’ve learned to dare hope it won’t come.

We’ve learned skill and beauty and love are no defense.

Throughout I've noted the tone. All previous installments employ a heightened tone, allowing our detachment. Our “heroes” are never totally sympathetic. Even poor Artist—who inspires pity—has his circumstances purposefully obscured, making complete identification difficult.

But now the tone will start broad and quickly shift to something almost naturalistic.

And now the Coens are going to make us identify.

And now the Coens are going to make us hope.

And now the Coens are going to make us care.

Bastards.

(Not to say that the only way to completely identify with a character is to have a naturalistic tone, by the way—far from it. Only to say that in this particular movie, that is one of the methods the Coens employ to achieve the effect.)

(Moving on...)

Alice Longabough, a woman who has lived her life under the control of men, finds herself suddenly alone on a wagon train and at the mercy of a likely cruel fate, when she discovers, unlooked for, a sudden chance at freedom and happiness, companionship, and perhaps even love.

Billy Knapp, a shy but highly capable and kind man, has made a career running settlers on the dangerous Oregon trail West. He fears he has locked himself into a hard and solitary life, when he discovers, unlooked for, a chance at happiness, companionship, and perhaps even love.

Billy Knapp intends to leave the wagon train and start a farm and a family with Alice.

We really like these two.

We really, really want to see them secure their hopes.

If we’ve been watching so far, we are very nervous for these people.

Because ... the lessons.

But of course, we’ve just seen the pattern broken in the previous installment. We’ve been given hope.

We’re even given a little piece of extra hope. Poor little Franklin Pearce, condemned to die, escapes.

However, if we’ve been watching so far, Mr. Arthur should worry us.

Mr. Arthur is Billy’s senior partner. He’s spent his life on the trail. It’s his livelihood. He doesn’t have anything else. Billy Knapp doesn’t want to end up like Mr. Arthur. But he’s also worried about his partner.

Billy’s worried about his partner’s reaction to his departure.

Mr. Arthur’s getting old. He relies on Billy. Billy’s worried what will happen to Mr. Arthur when he, Billy, leaves with Alice—when Alice takes Billy away.

Alice threatens Mr. Arthur’s livelihood.

When Arthur instead turns out to be the protector, then, we see a change in patterns. Which switches us to hope—Billy Knapp has told us already that Arthur is the most capable man he’s ever seen.

But still we worry. Because we know skill is not always enough to save us.

We watch as the battle takes one turn after another (echoes of PAN SHOT in the cry of DOG HOLE!), until Mr. Arthur at last turns a seeming defeat into victory …

… only to learn that this time the purty gal hasn’t stayed around to see the final twist.

So ends the culminating installment, in which all the themes come to full flower.

We identified with these two like none other, and so we feel the tragedy like none other.

Alice’s death is our death. Billy Knapp’s grief will be our grief.

And in case we missed it …

Having achieved the narrative climax, the final Installment provides us with a haunting denouement.

Chapter 6, “The Mortal Remains,” takes on an entirely new type of heightened tone. It is, in essence, a Twilight Zone episode with a Western setting.

It's also a summation.

Five strangers travel by coach through a little-seen wilderness as sunset passes into night. Three of them argue over various dualities of human experience, slowly gaining a terrible unspoken suspicion about the true nature of their passage, and of their two strange companions.

As our three passengers move from unawareness of their present situation, they argue over whether people are simple or complex, alike or different, animal or spirit, moral or amoral, and finally arrive at an final inescapable dualism:

Alive or dead.

Their argument is interrupted by the Irishman, who sings a mournful ballad, and the Englishman, who sums up exactly what the previous installment was about.

These two, clear personifications of death, have their roles. One distracts their prey. The other thumps him dead.

Here's what the Englishman says:

"They're so easily taken when they're distracted, people are.
So, I'm the distractor with a little story, a little conversation,
a song, a sparkle."

"And Clarence does the thumping while their attention is on me."

"You know the stories. People can't get enough of them. Like little children. Because, well, they connect the stories to themselves, I suppose, and we all love hearing about ourselves, so long as the people in the stories are us ... but *not* us."

"Not us in the end, especially. The Midnight Caller gets *him*—never *me.*

"I'll live forever."

I must say, it's always interesting watching them—after Clarence has worked his art, watching them negotiate...the passage.

"From here to there. To the other side. Watching them...
try to make sense of it, as they pass to that other place.

"I do like looking into their eyes, as they try to make sense of it."

"I do."

"I *do.*"

"And do they ever...succeed?"

"How would I know? I'm only watching."

With this, the Coens sum up both what they did to us in the story, and the worldview they communicate thereby.

You can use stories to identify or escape. You can find understanding or hide from it. Four stories of one type to show you one of the other.

It's a hell of a trick.

And for one last support to my idea that this is a set of connected narratives in support of a single rising action and a single climax, I offer what Mr. Arthur says immediately before the last fateful run of the battle.

He says:

"This'll tell the tale."

/end