Sit down, shut the curtains, and order that pizza.
The Prospector, searching for gold nuggets. Netflix
Sometimes, it feels like there’s a lot of passable content on Netflix; Cloverfield Station, Bright, anything featuring Adam Sandler. But there’s solid gold down there too, hidden among the dirt.
The Netflix model of giving the green light to creators to do… whatever the heck they want can indeed backfire; sometimes film studios reign in artistic impulses in for a reason. But sometimes, the Netflix “hands-off” approach results in a uniquely weird story that just wouldn’t be welcome elsewhere: Bojack Horseman, Santa Clarita Diet, The Haunting of Hill House.
At first glance, the Coen brothers might seem closer to independent film festivals than Netflix, but Joel Coen explained his decision to partner with the streaming giant, stating:
I think the more fundamental thing is that they [Netflix] are the people who are stepping up and spending money on movies that aren’t Marvel comic movies or big action franchise movies and that type of thing, which is pretty much the business of the studios now. We can’t argue with that.
And the money is well-spent – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is one of those special stories that just wouldn’t be aired elsewhere. Or rather, it’s a series of short stories set in the Old West, and each is a self-contained masterpiece. For some reason, the stories aren’t separated into individual episodes, but air in a feature film format, separated by flicking pages of a book.
The sheer variety of stories on offer is wonderful; some are hilarious, others deeply tragic. Some are downright surreal, and feel like the Coen Brothers experimenting with their newfound creative freedom.
The first story in the anthology, the titular “Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” is like that; it’s really quite strange, and perhaps not to everyone’s tastes. In a way, it’s similar to the first episode of Black Mirror (the one with the prime minister and the pig), simply because, tonally, it is not a good indication of what lies ahead.
But keep watching, and you will be rewarded with stories that aren’t just more grounded; they’re some of the best Westerns out there. All are immensely powerful, beautifully shot tales of life, death, and desperation on the frontier.
It’s a rich, diverse anthology of expertly crafted stories; my only complaint is that it was over too soon.
I’m fascinated by storytelling, in all its myriad forms; mythology, fairy tales, films, television, and urban legends.
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