The Ballad of Buster Scrugers is a film composed of six separate short stories by the Coen brothers, a director with black humor and absurd creative characteristics. In terms of form, it is very similar to the film "My Motherland and Me", which is also composed of small stories. Although there is no complete story line between the six short stories in The Ballad of Buster Scruggers, the theme idea has something in common: they all show the difficulties of surviving in the American West.
The Coen brothers are the evergreen trees of the film industry, the Coen brothers are not only two prolific directors, but also their screenwriting works and executive productions have also been praised by industry insiders, such as "Old NoBody", "The Earth Thunder", "Blood Labyrinth", etc., are well-known works they have directed.
In 2018, older brother Joel Cohen and younger brother Ethan Cohen co-directed The Ballad of Buster Scruggers, which won the Best Screenplay Award at the 75th Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Lion in the main competition section. It is an alternative tribute to the Coen brothers to the Western, and the broad narrative vision of the film and the Cohen's death philosophy contained in the film are the highlights that can attract everyone to watch.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > one or six stories, although short, present the living conditions of western gold diggers from six perspectives</h1>
The first short story is The Ballad of Buster Scruggers, which is both the title of the entire film and the name of the first short story. It is about a cowboy who likes to sing and has good marksmanship, thinks that he is the fastest gunner in the West, and has made up his story into a ballad. However, he was defeated in a duel by a young cowboy who drew his gun faster.
"Near Algodones" tells the story of a cowboy who commits crimes every time but succeeds every time, and in a bank robbery, he is recognized by the bank's seemingly elderly and ignorant cashier, and finally falls under the gun of the annual clerk.
The ironic story in the film, "Meal Ticket", tells the story of a disabled man and a coachman who perform together to make money, and later when the coachman finds that the performance of the disabled is not as much as the income that a cockfighter can bring, he buys a cockfight and throws the disabled man into the river.
In the plot reversal story "Golden Valley", the elderly gold prospector accidentally finds gold in a river valley, but unexpectedly, when he has just dug a hole to pan for gold, he is shot down by the trailing person, and the witty gold digger pretends to be unconscious, and when the trailer is not paying attention, he kills him.
In the female-themed story "Frightened Woman", the girl flees with her brother, the brother dies of illness in the middle of the road, the girl follows the captain of the carriage to continue to flee, and encounters robbers halfway. The captain told the girl that if I died, you would commit suicide. In the end, the captain and the robbers went through several rounds to save their lives, but the girl committed suicide in advance out of fear.
The last story, "The Remains," tells the story of five people traveling in a carriage to a small town, where they learn that there is a corpse on the roof of the car and that they are embarking on a road of no return that is unknown. Eventually, they enter a spooky inn whose doors are tightly closed, and perhaps, they will not be able to get out of here alive.
The six storylines are simple but philosophical. The protagonists of the six short stories include the wild Western cowboy, the witty bank teller, the disabled who is begging for life, the old man who has been panning for gold and finally discovering the gold mine, the captain of the carriage driving the caravan, and the nobles, gentlemen and killers. The masters in these stories have different occupations and different social hierarchies, and each represents a different group of people living in the American West of the last century.
The film "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" looks at everyone in the Gold Rush period in the American West by depicting six very different characters and the stories that happened to them.
Compared with a feature film, everyone here is the protagonist of the film, all interpreting their own lives, they form a flesh-and-blood social group, allowing the audience to look at people and things in that era from more angles and intuitively.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > ii, the Coen brothers' philosophy of death is vividly interpreted in these short films</h1>
The philosophy of death, both in the East and the West, is an eternal topic, such as Martin Heidegger's life to death, the Buddhist view of death as reincarnation and other concepts of life and death, which have long been understood.
Death is also an indispensable element in the film's narrative, and the director expounds his outlook on life and world by telling about life and death. Death in film and television works can play a role in setting off the atmosphere, guiding the plot and laying the foreshadowing, and can also reflect the director's understanding of the philosophy of death, which has an irreplaceable role in enhancing the aesthetic value and speculation of the film.
In the Coen Brothers' film Ballad of Buster Scrugers, the director arranges the plot of death in each story, through these stories of life and death, to illustrate the concept of death as a natural change, and how to measure the two concepts of life and money.
1. Death is the change of nature
There is no rebirth without death, trees can only re-sprout after death, and old animals need to give their lives to provide living space for young animals. The same is true of human society, when young people arrive, it is the moment when old heroes walk off the altar.
In the first story, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the gunner considered himself invincible in the West, and indeed, he drew his gun quickly, could fight three against three, and was brave and strategic. But he did not know that there would be gunmen in this land who were stronger than him, just as the back wave of the Yangtze River pushed the front wave, and the blue was better than the blue. The next generation of young gunners will gradually take his place, and human society will continue to change like nature, but unfortunately, after he was hit, he understood this truth.
2. How to measure life and money
In the story "Meal Ticket", when the coachman sees the cockfighting, a trace of evil thoughts float in his heart, he can continue to perform with the disabled youth and endure poverty; he can also buy the cockfighting, leave the youth to live and die, and make a lot of money himself. After a struggle of ideas along the way, the coachman still chose money, but he was more cruel, throwing the youth into the river to kill people.
Life in the West is always good and evil, there is good and evil, and the evil is more evil than you think, in the choice between money and life, not everyone can make the right choice, in the eyes of some people, other people's lives are worthless.
Also in the story "Golden Valley", the killer who follows the gold digger also chooses to seek wealth and kill, he loses all resistance in front of the gold at his fingertips, so that the killing intention rises, but ironically, he eventually dies under the gun of the old man and suffers the consequences of himself.
Life in the West was what it looked like, simply an animal world without laws and the weak. The director materializes the truths of life and death through several small stories, and the easy-to-understand narration to the audience is more alarming, so that the audience has a sense of peeping in the tube.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > iii, the coen brothers' creations redefined the structural form of westerns</h1>
The Western film that originated in the United States is a film genre that every American director is willing to try and shoot, and it is not only an unforgettable history of the United States, but also a spiritual totem in the hearts of Americans.
Under this genre, directors often arrange stories such as wars with Indians, bounty hunters, western gold rushes, police confrontations, and disputes between the southern and northern United States, and the diversity of stories is the reason for the popularity of Westerns.
The film "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" introduces a fragmentary film structure, comparing it with the well-known Western film "The Old NoBody" previously shot by the Coen brothers, and it is not difficult to find that this film is indeed a major innovation of Westerns.
1. Single story, and multiple stories
The Ballad of Buster Scrugers consists of six stories, and the Coen brothers love this type of collection film very much, but with the development of the times, the audience of this type of film is very small, and the director initially intends to make six miniseries, and finally decided to present it in the form of a movie.
Obviously, the diversified story structure composed of six stories is more nuanced and covers a wide range of characters in the western period, which has the effect of depicting one hundred and eight people in "Water Margin" but with different looks, which is a novel structural technique in Western movies.
In contrast, "Old Nobody" tells a traditional western assassination story, the story line is single, the characters are limited, and it only pays attention to the deep excavation of the characters' personalities and hearts to reflect the state and environment of the society at that time.
2. Expound an idea from multiple angles, and expound an idea from a single perspective
Although the film is composed of six stories, if you think about it carefully, the ideological themes expressed in it are the same, and these stories tell the rules of survival in the Western United States, that is, to show the difficult life and harsh living environment in the West at that time, and each story has its own style.
The first two are witty and absurd; the third is hopeless and helpless; the fourth and fifth are tinged with some sadness; the final chapter, although somewhat confusing, is the one that is the most evocative. The director is ingenious, and several styles are used in a film to tell this simple truth, showing the survival rules of the West.
In contrast, the social changes, the decline of the legal system of human nature, and the theme of nostalgia for fairness and justice, which are expounded in the film "Old and Helpless", are used as a carrier by a long story. Long stories have twists and turns, with a variety of characters, but they are all designed around a central point, and it is difficult to diverge. In terms of the interestingness and perspective of the story, it is better to explain the objective from multiple angles.
It can be seen that multi-angle, multi-style exposition of the central idea is the biggest innovation point of this film.
epilogue:
Beautiful valleys, endless grasslands and meandering streams, I wonder if the audience is confused by these western beauties, thinking that panning for gold in the west is to enter the rich and noble township. Instead, the six stories in the film tell the audience about the rush, poverty, and even death, all the time surrounding the people living in the American West. There, everyone even has to be as brave and strong as a beast, learn the rules of survival, in order to survive reluctantly, this is the real western life.