The five remaining sections of the movie tell stories of hubris, injustice, and greed, devastating cruelty and breathtaking compassion - though considerably more of the former than the latter. The allegory of “Buster Scruggs” sets us up for the subversion to come. The Coens begin the film by dismantling not just the idea of the American hero, but the entire basis of American identity. It reminds us of the falseness of the gunslinger mythology used then to sell paperbacks and, eventually, tickets to the cinema. But why name the movie after (or even begin with) this relatively short - and, frankly, underwhelming - tale? Buster Scruggs may well be emblematic of America itself: a quietly sharp and calculating killer with the outward affectation of friendliness and diplomacy. The rest of the first story revels in these extremes: Scruggs’ aw-shucks heroics and his preponderance for ultraviolence. But when he enters a saloon in the middle of nowhere and the gruff patrons don’t take to his dopey demeanor, he shoots everyone present with frosty precision. He speaks directly to the audience with cheerful eloquence and a carefree attitude, totes his guitar on horseback, and sings goofy songs in the desert wilderness.
He’s unveiled as a conventional white-hat cowboy, the standard western good guy, despite being a wanted man. The titular story opens the film with a cartoonish figure of myth: a legendary gunslinger and balladier named Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson). The result is a movie that engages not only with the ways America sees itself in the 21st century, but also with the fables it has long been captivated by. These disparate elements are unified with an overused but appropriate framing device: each of the stories comes to life out of the pages of a western fiction collection. It has all the western tropes: through its six vignettes, the film portrays pistol duels, bank robberies, public hangings, shootouts, prospectors, stagecoach rides, and the romance of gallant cowboys and virtuous maidens. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the latest film from the Coen Brothers, in an anthological epic about the enormous breadth of American vice, but it’s equally about that kind of storytelling. Over time, the tales Americans told about themselves have dredged out the marrow of American character. The first westerns shaped the country’s beliefs and convictions through contrivance and fabrication, repressing generations of wicked violence and exploitation under platitudes about exceptionalism and liberty revisionist westerns in many ways dismantled the fiction, and answered America’s mythology with the reality of the brutality of the frontier. As the national culture evolves, the western follows, along with all its grand theories about independence, freedom, and honor. Westerns tell the story of America - or more precisely, they tell the story of America from its own perspective.
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