This article was originally published in today's headlines Uncle Eggplant v letter: qieshuwx
2018 is coming to an end, and in this year, we have seen many bad movies and many good movies.
Everyone has their own standard for judging how good or bad a movie is.
No, Uncle recently watched a film that was included in the top three of his year, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs".
At present, the douban score of the film is 8.4 points (and continues to grow)
You can't absolutely say to everyone that "The Ballad of Buster Scrugers" is a good film, but it can be said that it is the most "tone" film of 2018.
This "tone" mainly comes from the few brother partners in the international film industry - the Coen brothers.
As directors and screenwriters who focus on making American "Westerns", the Coen brothers have spent $800,000 and 2 months to shoot their debut film "Blood Labyrinth" since 1984, when they smashed the pot and sold iron.
In more than three decades, it has swept almost all international film festivals around the world.
"The Ballad of Buster Scruggers" took away the Best Screenplay Award at its debut at the Venice Film Festival, and the film was also considered by major film critics and individuals to have basically booked several Oscars in the coming year.
The following uncle will take you to see this very awkward and very "tone" "Ballad of Buster Scruggers".
The film is made up of six separate short stories that, while seemingly unrelated, share several of the same themes: death, the West, human nature, the unexpected...
If you are a coen brothers movie fan, you will feel unusually kind to watch the film. Because it combines various elements of the Coen brothers' previous works, "Wild West" in "Earth Thunder", the impermanence of the world in "Old Nothing", the black humor in "Murder green toe" and "Escape from Prison Three Kings", the desolation and sadness in "Drunken Folk Song"...
The six stories are:
1 "The Ballad of Buster Scrugs" The story of a sharpshooter who likes to sing and dance and kills all the way in an invincible posture, but eventually encounters an opponent of equal strength;
2 "Near Algodones", the story of a cowboy who attempts to rob a bank and is hanged twice on the same day;
3 "Meal Tickets" is a story between a manager of a mobile theater troupe and a disabled "artist" without limbs;
4 "Golden Valley" A gold mine explorer breaks into an out-of-the-world canyon, is ecstatic about the discovery of a gold mine, and faces the story of the evil encroachment forces that follow;
5 "Frightened Woman" A woman who reluctantly crossed the west with her brother in a convoy, after facing the sudden death of her brother, helplessly turned to the team leader for help;
6 The Remains is the story of five strangers of different identities who travel in the same stagecoach to a mysterious location.
One is better than the other, and one is more "tone".
To borrow the summary of the oil poem of netizens, it is:
One operation was as fierce as a tiger, and the result was two hundred and five; The king of Yama wants you to die three more times, and live two more seconds to die; The tiger falls in Pingyang and is bullied by the dog, and the phoenix is not as good as the chicken; After killing people, they do not replenish their guns, and they absolutely die hard; Don't be impulsive when you encounter danger, otherwise regret is useless; Life is like riding a carriage, getting off when it's time to get off.
Space is limited, uncle here to pick two to detail:
2 "Near Algodones"
A cowboy who is neither chivalrous nor gangster, stands on a dilapidated wasteland, hesitating to rob a bank.
With hesitation, he went into the bank,
Compared to the dilapidation outside, the bank was unusually tidy, and there was only a seemingly uninsuring little old man inside.
The old man did not know whether the comer was an enemy or a friend, so he began his own pan mode (blowing b)
Just as the old man was bragging about how awesome he was, the cowboy pulled out his gun with a disdainful face: Don't blow it, I rob, take the money out!
When the cowboy took the sack of money, the old man secretly ran out, and he put himself "fully armed".
With pots and pans all over his body, the old man used this very disturbing operation to dry the cowboy down, and it turned out that the blowing b in front of the old man was not empty.
Don't listen to the old man, suffer losses in front of you
When the cowboy wakes up, he finds himself hanging from a tree by the mounted police and is about to be executed.
The cowboy said that the old man did not win enough glory, and he was very depressed in such a way of death.
And the mounted police don't care about the cowboy's defense, they only care about who the horse belongs to after the cowboy dies.
Just as the cowboy was about to close his eyes like this, a group of Indians came out from a distance,
They eliminated the mounted police, took away their weapons and horses, and left the cowboy on horseback with a confused face resigned to fate.
Where there are horses that do not eat grass,
As the horse grazes forward step by step, the cowboy will be closer to death.
In the distance, a herd of cattle passed by, and the cattle herders rescued the cowboys.
Cowboy thought that there would be a blessing in the face of this great difficulty not to die,
Unfortunately, he thought wrongly, and it wasn't long before another group of mounted police officers surrounded him, and the cattlemen ran away, leaving only another cowboy with a confused face.
Cowboys were charged with stealing cattle.
In a place like the West where all problems are solved by force, even if you are innocent, as long as you are identified as a criminal by others, no amount of justification is meaningless.
In this way, the cowboy was on the gallows again, and he asked the others with great interest: First time?
Before the execution, the cowboy saw a beautiful girl dressed in bright clothes among the onlookers.
The two once looked at each other with a love pulse,
Unfortunately, there was no miracle this time, a black bag was put on, the floor was withdrawn, and the cowboy's eyes were blackened to end the story.
The beauty of this story is that everything is so absurd, so unexpected, but so reasonable.
Although the story is the shortest of the six, it is the most wonderful one in terms of perception.
6: "Remains"
In the setting sun, five passengers sat in a speeding carriage, a coachman in front of it, and a corpse on the roof.
The five passengers were: Frenchman, Noble Lady, and Orc Catcher
and two self-proclaimed "soul reapers" of the "bounty hunters".
Compared with the previous five, this story is basically no plot story, and the whole story is the ripping calf of the five people in the cloud fog on the carriage.
You may say, then this boring story should be able to stop watching,
But what Uncle wants to tell you is that this is the most worthwhile story of the film, because what is contained in it is the essence of the whole film.
Uncle here to explain to you:
The two self-proclaimed "Soul Reapers" were actually the god of death.
The carriage was heading to a place called Mogenburg, where none of the three passengers on the other side of the Grim Reaper had ever been, but they said they had been there many times—and man died once, and mortals naturally did not go before they died
It's a carriage that never stops halfway before it reaches the end — it's time
The story begins at sunset and ends in the early hours of midnight – a foreshadowing that the passengers in the car are about to finish their lives.
After the carriage arrived at the station, it was a spooky hotel,
The French, the ladies, and the orcs were a little reluctant to get out of the car, but they got out of the car anyway.
There are two regiments on the door of the hotel, "angels" on one side and "rams" (Satan) on the other side – corresponding to heaven and hell
The three men standing in front of the door looked at each other, the noblewoman and the orc catcher entered first, and the Frenchman first hesitated for half a moment with a dignified face, and then put on a hat and closed the door without turning his head.
The story ends.
How to say it, the core theme of the film is to discuss "death",
Death of one's own causes (death) – corresponds to 1
Luckily escaped multiple deaths (should always come) - corresponding to 2
Helplessly abandoned and dies (no filial piety before the bedside for a long time) - corresponds to 3
Death due to one's own negligence – corresponds to 4
Don't be impulsive when you encounter danger, otherwise regret is useless (suicide) - corresponds to 5
There are two things that are fairest for all people, one is birth and the other is death – corresponding to 6
Death, each of us can not escape, just die early and die late,
Being born as a human being, living every day conscientiously, living in the moment, and finding the meaning of life is the greatest reverence for life.
Regarding the Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers, in addition to expressing many thoughts about death,
They also hid many bootleg goods, such as:
Self-tribute, as Uncle mentioned earlier, in the six stories of the film, you can find the shadow of the Coen brothers' previous works;
Another is that the Coen brothers have the suspense of suspected making trailers for Netflix American dramas.
Friends who want to see more suspense movies, love movies, ethics movies, marriage movies, science fiction movies
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