Review of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) by Coenonly — 26 Nov 2018
Buster Scruggs is a speck in the distance of the most spectacular of all the Western Landscapes ... Monument Valley.
We hear his uptempo clip clop version of Cool Clear Water.
The Coens aren't about that kind of nourishment though.
For them it's all about the ideas and basically blowing your mind one way or another.
They marry up images into pairs that mysteriously inform one another. Like the way the feet line up at the demise inspections in Busters final shootouts, and the camera notes it and the editor notes it and it is in you brain like a clue to the mystery and that's what it is.
They say if they become aware of subtext they put it in the real text. I find this hard to fathom that they don't do subtext.
It's their dedication to this mystery I suppose.
They turn away from certainties like they've seen a ghost.
Death is pretty certain but even on that point they find disparities. They want the mystery, they need the mystery and that's the stock in trade. In life we are bombarded by the sound of certainty in all it's salesman glory. Check with the most cursory inspection and those realities fall vulnerable. Yet within the uncertain framework they present you find yourself these little light bulbs that illuminate some point or other.
A point that artists are to contribute or out you go into the cold flowing river. Or is it the cruel world that doesn't understand?
The Coens have six shorts in this chamber and they have worked like ten prospectors to uncover and manifest the greatest ever shootout with Hollywood's Western Mythology.
Let them blow you away into the dust or what you think is anyway.
This review of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) was written by Coenonly on 26 Nov 2018.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has generally received positive reviews.
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