The Ballad of Buster Scruggsmay not be the bestCoen Brothersmovie, but it’s one that crystallizes their themes by using the Western as a canvas to explore morality and death.Buster Scruggsnever tries to play it real as a historical Western with real people, but rather showcases the Western as it has been seen through cinema, complete with oversized characters against even larger vistas.Through each of the six shorts inBuster Scruggs— “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” “Near Algodones,” “Meal Ticket,” “All Gold Canyon,” “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” and “The Mortal Remains”— we can see the randomness of death and the unfairness of life, but in the final installment, the Coens pull the camera way back to see a trip to the afterlife as if it were a Western. So, what happens in each ending ofThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs?
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs presents an anthology of six distinct tales set in the American frontier, exploring themes of life, death, and justice. Each story, varying in tone and style, delivers a unique perspective on the struggles and eccentricities of characters navigating the challenges of the Wild West.
In each of the shorts inThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs, most of the characters are as good as dead— they just don’t know it yet. Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) will die in a gunfight, the cowboy (James Franco) in “Near Algodones” will be hanged, Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) in “The Girl Who Got Rattled” will take her own life, and the artist Harrison (Harry Melling) in “The Meal Ticket” is left to drown by his Impresario (Liam Neeson). While the prospector (Tom Waits) in “All Gold Canyon” ends up finding the gold he has been searching his entire life for, the Coens suggest that this is the last grasp of happiness he will ever have before meeting his demise.
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As a means of tying the six shorts together,the Coens endThe Ballad of Buster Scruggswith a segment that metaphorically explores the passage into the afterlife; each of the characters resembles a “reaper” from Biblical scripture. The reapers in “The Mortal Remains” are the ones who are correct that only two kinds of people are “dead or alive,” but that’s not to say they’re the only ones in the stagecoach who are right.
The first segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, entitled “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” is easily the most playful.Tim Blake Nelson’s singing, seemingly good-natured cowboyis so confident in his marksmanship abilities that he never considers that he would meet a faster gun in the Wild West.Scruggs' confidence is so exaggerated that he refuses to play the “dead man’s hand” he is dealt in a game of poker; in Western mythology, this hand signifies that the player is about to be murdered. Scruggs refuses to listen to this warning, leading him to get shot down in combat with “The Kid” (Willie Watson). This segment, and Scruggs' death, explores the price of overconfidence and ego.
What Happens to James Franco in “Near Algodones”?
“Near Algodones” is another brutal story inThe Ballad of Buster Scruggsabout the ways that consequences rear their ugly head. James Franco’s cowboy thinks that he has struck gold when he robs a bank in New Mexico. Unfortunately, the bank’s teller (Stephen Root) knocks the cowboy out, with him soon waking up sitting on his horse under a tree with a noose around his neck. The cowboy is forced to fight for his life as a battle between Comanche warriors breaks out in front of him, which connects to the idea of watching life pass by in the moments before death. He is eventually freed by a drover (Jesse Luken) passing by, but then recaptured by another posse. In the end,death isn’t something he can escape from; thecowboy is brought to the gallows in another town and hanged.
Liam Neeson Finds a New “Meal Ticket” and Kills the Artist
Perhaps the most disturbing of all the segments,“Meal Ticket,” starring Liam Neeson, focuses on an Impresario who travels with an artist named Harrison, who has no arms or legs but theatrically orates stories from history, mythology, and scripture. While the Impresario initially relies on the artist to have a career and serves as his caretaker, their profits begin dwindling. The Impresario then becomes interested in a seemingly “magical” chicken who solves arithmetic problems, and purchases it so that the chicken can be his money-maker.Upon finding his new muse, the Impresario throws Harrison from a cliff and leaves him to drown, as he has no reason to look after the artist if he can’t profit from him.
What Happens to Tom Waits' Prospector in “All Gold Canyon”?
If “Meal Ticket” is the most bleak and shocking segment ofThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs, “All Gold Canyon” is the most energetic. The story focuses on anold prospector played by Tom Waitswho searches for gold in the mountain valley. After finally finding the quartz he’s spent years searching for, the prospector is brutally shot in the back by a rival (Sam Dillon). Thinking the prospector is dead, the young man begins stealing his fortune untilthe prospector rises, takes the young man’s gun, and shoots him dead.The prospector believes that his wounds aren’t fatal, and he finishes collecting his riches. He buries the young man in the now-empty hole and departs.
Why Did Zoe Kazan’s Alice Shoot Herself in “The Gal Who Got Rattled”?
“The Girl Who Got Rattled” centers ona woman named Alice (played by Zoe Kazan)as she travels to Oregon by wagon with her brother, Gilbert (Jefferson Mays). Gilbert claims that great prosperity awaits them in the new territory and that marrying Alice off to a colleague will offer her good fortune. However, Gilbert dies of cholera during the trip, leaving Alice penniless and saddled with debt. Seeking to build a home and a family off the road,one of the wagon leaders, Billy (Bill Heck), offers to marry Alice so that they may start a life together.
While it looks like Alice’s fate is turning up, the group soon sees an approaching war party. The other wagon leader, Mr. Arthur (Grainger Hines),hands Alice a pistol and tells her to shoot herself if he is killed, as the warriors would potentially kidnap and assault her. As with many of the shorts, “The Girl Who Got Rattled” ends on a tragically ironic note.Arthur survives the attack and kills the assailant, but, hearing the gunshot, Alice assumes that Arthur has been killed. She then shoots herself, leaving Arthur to find her corpse and inform Billy of what happened.
“The Mortal Remains” Ties It All Together
The last segment ofThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs, “The Mortal Remains,” is incredibly playful. It starts off looking like a normal stagecoach ride that slowly reveals itself to be a trip to the afterlife for René the Frenchman (Saul Rubinek), Mrs. Betjeman the Lady (Tyne Daly), and the Trapper (Chelcie Ross), whose souls are being harvested by Thigpen the Englishman (Jonjo O’Neill) and Clarence the Irishman (Brendan Gleeson). It’s a parable that wants you to know it’s a parable, andwhile people die in all the otherBuster Scruggsshorts, “The Mortal Remains” is the only one where the characters are already dead.
It’s pretty clear that this is what the Coen Brothers are going for in this segment. They start with a normal Western setup — a stagecoach ride — and then slowly reveal what’s actually happening.The Stagecoach driver, clad in black, is Death(“He won’t stop,” says the Englishman), the Englishman and the Irishman admit to being “Harvesters of Souls,” and the Englishman becomes offended when they’re called “Bounty Hunters” as the Trapper tries to put them back into a context he can understand. Additionally, as the segment goes on, thelighting goes from a warm glow (life) to cold and blue (death)as the souls of the Frenchmen, Lady, and Trapper cross over. Mr. Thorpe, the body on top of the stagecoach, is also crossing over, but he’s not afforded the gentleness of the journey. Finally, when they arrive at the hotel, the Frenchman, Lady, and Trapper are nervous to enter (since it’s the entrance to the afterlife and not a normal hotel as they originally assumed) and on the inside, there’s a stairway going up to a bright, unseen light.
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The members of the stagecoach in “The Mortal Remains” also all have different philosophies on life. The Trapper believes everyone is the same (“like ferrets”), the Lady sees people as either “upright or sinning,” and the Frenchman looks at the world and sees either the lucky or the unlucky. Furthermore, therelationships these people have are all experienced through their unique perspectives, and fleeting as such. The Lady views her relationship with her husband as deep and abiding, while The Frenchman sees it as a joke, and the Trapper thinks he had a relationship with a Native American woman even though they didn’t speak the same language, which, in his mind, proves the power of human connection.
Whatthese conversations in “The Mortal Remains” point out is that everybody struggles to make sense of the worldaround us, but we can only do our best through our own point of view. For better or worse, we’re also extremely confident in that point of view, and as the Englishman notes, “We love hearing about ourselves. As long as the people in the stories are us, but not us. Not us in the end, especially.” We’re all guilty of confirmation bias, and yet that will not save us. The Lady is just as dead as the Frenchman, who is just as dead as the Trapper.
That’snot to say that the Coens are nihilists(“That must be exhausting,” The Dude mocks when he sees the nihilist passed out in the swimming pool inThe Big Lebowski) as much as they see a world with swift repercussions, but one that’s also random where the only certainty is death. And in this way, there’s something oddly life-affirming aboutThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and particularly, “The Mortal Remains.” For all our different viewpoints and total certainty, we’re all going to die.Death doesn’t make our lives meaningless, but we are connected in the darkest of ways. A Lady who would ordinarily never cross paths with someone as rough as the Trapper shares a stagecoach with him — they’re still going to the same place. That doesn’t mean they’ve “figured it out,” but the destination remains the same. It’s an ending that’s grim, darkly comic, and, of course, 100% Coen Brothers.
