Gore, Comedy, and Action:Is the Ballad of Buster Scruggs binge-watchable?
I have never really been able to sit down and “binge watch” a show because I am always so busy, that was until corona happened. March 2020 was when I first started being able to binge watch anything, and I watched all of Orange is the New Black. It was weird just sitting down and watching something without stopping, but I realized it passed time really fast. Since I finished that show, I’ve binge watched many shows because of the quarantine we were put in and I had nothing better to do. I personally like shows or movies that are romcoms or just comedies. I would recommend binge watching The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, because it is funny and interesting because of the tragedies that occur throughout the movie. The ballad of Buster Scruggs is a western film that has six different mini films in the whole movie, and each mini film is different from the others, and I personally do recommend binge watching it.
The film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is full of multiple stories. The directors are Ethan and Joel Coen. From the first vinegette of the movie, I thought it was a musical, because Buster Scruggs, played by Tim Blake Nelson, was singing, and I liked it because I personally love musicals. But little did I know, it was far from a musical. Buster Scruggs was a wanted man, I found that hard to believe, because he didn’t seem threatening to me. Buster says after his first song he sings, “Maybe some of y’all have heard of me. Buster Scruggs, known to some as the San Saba Songbird. I got other handles, nicknames, appellations, and cognomens, but this one here I don’t consider to be even halfway earned. Misanthrope? I don’t hate my fellow man..”
This shows that he is known by several different names and many people know of him somehow because of something he did. However, no one seemed to take him seriously. When he went to the first saloon, he wanted whiskey, but the bartender told him “Whiskey’s illegal.” Which Buster Scruggs then asked what everyone else was drinking and was told whiskey, and that they were outlaws. Buster tries to explain how he too is an outlaw when one of the men say “You ain’t no outlaw. And we don’t drink with tinhorns.” Scruggs says something back and makes this man mad, so he asked Buster if his gun works, and Buster responded by shooting him in the head saying, “Appears to do, yes.” Then he continues to shoot and kill everyone in the saloon and walk out like it never happened. I never would have expected that, because he seemed so innocent and like he wouldn’t do anything like that, and he would go from killing people back to singing like nothing happened.
In the mini film “The Gal Who got Rattled”, Ms. Longabaugh, played by Zoe Kazan, her dog and her brother, Gilbert Longabaugh, played by Jefferson Mays, travel to Oregon. During that travel, Gilbert passes away, and people complain about Ms. Longabaugh’s dog being too loud. After Gilbert passed, Alice did not know how she would pay back the boy who was hired to lead her wagon since he was promised more than the usual wage he would have received. She went to Mr. Billy Knapp for advice. After having several conversations and slowly falling in love with each other, Knapp proposed to Alice, and she accepts his proposal. The next day, Mr. Arthur hears Ms. Longabaugh’s dog barking from a far, so he went to see what was going on and saw that her and the dog went away from the group. Mr. Arthur went down to get them and bring them back, when Native Americans soon came and they started shooting. Alice got handed a gun and was told by Mr. Arthur, “Take this… got two bullets in it. It ain’t for shooting Indians. If I see we’re licked, I’m gonna shoot you, then I’m gonna shoot myself, so that’s okay. But if you see that I’m done for, well, you’re gonna have to do for yourself.” She started to cry and said “No, no, no, no” because she was terrified. Soon enough, Mr. Arthur and the Natives are done fighting and he turned around, heard the dog barking at Ms. Longabaugh and saw that she had shot herself. He did not know what he would tell Billy Knapp. If you like romance and western films, I definitely recommend this vinegette to watch, because it shows how the people of that time in the west struggled with money and also what they went through on their travel to where they were headed. It shows how they struggled with money, because Alice did not know how she would be able to pay the boy who was hired to lead her wagon, and some of the struggle they went through that it showed were how they would be rushed by Indians if they were alone. This vinegette is my favorite out of this whole movie.
Personally, I would recommend binge-watching this movie, especially if you enjoy comedies. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is both funny and intense. I never heard of this movie, until recently and probably never would have watched it because I usually don’t watch action like movies, but I am glad I did watch this because it has a lot of dark humor. All the separate films in this movie are completely different, but also similar. They all have tragic endings whether it shows us what happens in the end or if it lets us decide what we believe really happened. Like in the very last film, as they walked into the hotel the movie didn’t show if they died or not, that was just up to us to decide and for us to think what we believed to have happened. I enjoyed this movie a lot, and definitely recommend it for people who enjoy action and dark humor.
