"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs": Tom Waits and James Franco in the most free film of the Coens brothers

"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is a new film by filmmakers and screenwriters Ethan and Joel Coens. This time, the brothers filmed a parodic film almanac about the Wild West - with James Franco, Liam Neeson and Tom Waits. I think that "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" turned out to be the freest and least strict of all the Coens paintings - which does not prevent it from being flawless in details.

Any film deserves an impartial analysis - an analysis of weak and strong sides, after which a verdict should be made: one must look or not necessarily. It does not work with the Coens brothers. Not that they were above criticism; just each of their new picture, even the most unfortunate, is a holiday. "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is two hours of unceasing joy, which is not overshadowed by the obvious fact that in the series of Cohen films this is perhaps the most macabre and hopeless.

The author's abstract is sustained in the same ominous-arrogant tone as the movie itself.

"We have always loved anthology films, especially those made in Italy of the 1960s, which were worked on by different directors who developed the same theme. Writing scripts for the Western anthology, we tried to achieve the same and invited the best modern directors. We were lucky that both agreed".

It is worth adding that in this joke, there must be only a fraction of the joke. "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" was supposed to be a series filmed on Netflix’s order (perhaps different directors were supposed to be for different episodes), and as a result turned into a conceptual full meter - the 18th one for tireless brothers. Moreover, the third spectacular film in the Netflix lineup at the Venice Festival, followed by Alfonso Cuarón and Orson Welles.

Cozy and dull, but a win-win design "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" - an old, 1873rd year of publication, a book with color illustrations. The hand of an unknown reader scrolls it, moving from the novella to the novella. There is no other connection besides the genre between the segments of the film. Even the Buster Scruggs mentioned in the title is not a see-through character, as one might imagine, but simply a hero of the first episode. Thus, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is the freest, compositionally disorderly and least strict of Cohen films. It will irritate one, others will charm.

In the first novelty of Buster Scruggs, a merry shooter in an awkwardly snow-white dress and hat, riding a horse named Dave (in this film all animals have their names) rides through the Monument Valley to a provincial town. The affair will quickly end in a cruel slaughter, which will not prevent the participants in the bloodshed from singing some popular songs. In the second, the cowboy will make a not entirely successful attempt to rob a bank. In the third impresario will travel around the villages with a disabled actor. In the fourth, the lone gold miner will try his luck in an abandoned valley. In the fifth brother and sister will try to move from town to town. In the sixth, several characters will meet in one stage, logically looping a set of the most common scenes found in westerns. The parody almanac consists of clichés and common places, but plot paradoxes are hidden in their depths (out of respect for the viewer, we can do without hints on them).

As always with Coens, the film is beautifully made. Their perfectionism comes to ridicule, as it was in the previous attempt at westerns, "True Grit" (the brothers were chosen more than once in the genre, including, in "No Country For Old Men" and "Hail, Caesar!", But never far not engaged in so frank trolling). The operator here is the virtuoso French Bruno Delbonnel, whom Coens is invited to when they need a distance, a foreigner look: this was the case with the same Delbonnel in the film "Inside Llewyn Davis".

The constant composer Coens Carter Burwell fills up with a carefully orchestrated nightingale, imitating plenty of soulless motifs in the spirit of John Ford. Actors clearly enjoy the role of all juicy - and at the same time small. Best of all, the public will remember, you can be sure, you know "Oh, where are you, brother?" Tim Blake Nelson is a singing and well-aimed Buster, but he will get guaranteed pleasure from meeting with Liam Neeson (impresario), Brendan Gleeson (bounty hunter), James Franco (cowboy), Zoe Kazan (immigrant), and, of course, aged and matures even more - it seemed it was impossible! - Tom Waits (gold miner), who endured all of his short story on himself almost alone. The most perceptive will whistle when he recognized the British Harry Melling as the armless and legless actor-reciter - he played the nasty cousin Dudley in the saga of Harry Potter.

Undoubtedly, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is a masterfully made trifle, a charming trifle. However, this is the only claim that can be presented to the film. Coens here not only play American classics - they with extraordinary ease prove their right to be considered as such, drawing the viewer over and over again with unfamiliar characters, non-standard plot twists and change of stylistic registers. Sometimes it may seem that the picture they did is "weak", without setting any artistic or conceptual tasks. However, it is so unlike them that, unwittingly, you look for a single and, preferably, deep meaning in everything you see.