But the film’s excellence is more conceptual than pictorial: Its genius lies in how its page-turning structure-one short story after another after another-works to numb, distance, and then resensitize us to the dread and loss lurking underneath even the tallest tales. Boasting pristine digital cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel and superb production design by Jess Gonchor, it’s a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship, even calling attention to its own aesthetic perfection through the framing device of an old-fashioned picture book whose dusty pages are punctuated by saturated color plates. The surface appeal of the Coens’ latest plunge into Wild West iconography following Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit lies in its impeccable visualization of turn-of-the-century dime-store novels. Death takes many forms in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, from slapstick gun play to suicide to natural causes the aforementioned stagecoach is transporting several corpses along with its human cargo. “If you would like to sleep in a coffin, it would be all right,” intones an undertaker at the beginning of True Grit, establishing the film’s morbid mood. Murder was a plot point in early thrillers like Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing, but in recent years the Coens’ depictions of death have deepened. Or maybe it’s the melancholy of aging smart-alecks trying genuinely to tangle with mortality as subject matter. It might be simple misanthropy that motivates a pair of filmmakers to spend a blank check from Netflix on a bleak, violent frontier epic whose six segments are, first and foremost, about death and dying. Of the many nicknames Buster proudly rattles off to the audience, the one that’s printed on his Wanted poster-right above “Dead or Alive”-feels like the Coens kidding their critics: It reads, simply, “The Misanthrope.” Scruggs serves as Joel and Ethan Coen’s deceptively self-deprecating stand-in. He’s also a sociopathic crackshot like Anton Chigurh, a walking contradiction who juxtaposes his creators’ twin impulses as entertainers and existentialists. He sings like a Soggy Bottom Boy and drawls like Sam Elliott’s narrator in Lebowski (and even wears the same kind of 10-gallon white cowboy hat). The title character is a gunslinger played by Tim Blake Nelson. A World of Pain: The Definitive Ranking of Coen Brothers Movies
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