Many have tried to emulate, but none have the ability to elegantly shift between moods as adroitly as they do, and no clearer has it ever been than with their latest project.
The Coen Brothers are a filmmaking prototype. However, the absolute brilliance of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the new feature length anthology Western from the duo, is perhaps the clearest example yet of the importance of Netflix in the rapidly evolving cinematic landscape. “They’re the people who are stepping up and spending money on movies that aren’t Marvel comic movies or big action franchises… which is pretty much the business of studios now,” Joel Coen recently said of Netflix in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “We can’t argue with that.” As one half of the Coen Brothers, the writer/director/editor partnership that created the likes of The Big Lebowski, Fargo and No Country For Old Men, it must be endlessly frustrating to see even a track record of that quality be met with a closed chequebook from the major studios. In short, these symbols are a fine way to see how the story and its meaning progress.Starring: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Brendan Gleeson It’s interesting to underline the contrast between the audience and the Irishman attitudes in the screenplay.
#BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS FULL#
From the surprised audience when they see the armless and legless Artist, Horatio’s penetrating and full of light eyes, the eyes of a bored public, the gaze of the Irishman to the chicken, the look in Horatio’s face when he realises he will die. A way the Coen Brothers found to ridicule this cliché in Westerns. It’s a symbol repeated during the entire film and even Buster Scruggs laughs at it. From the very first time, we see the Irishman is not someone to trust as he wears a black hat. Even he is described in the screenplay as an “air-sawing Shakespearian actor”. In the last monologue Horatio confronts the wind. In moments of solitude, the wind invades the scene. The symbol evolves from a “shallow stream” to a small river whose “fast-moving water boils and gurgles”. The tale starts with a horse-drawn cart going through mountains near a shallow stream, the snow, the Irish song about a woman thrown to the river until the Irishman throws the rock into the river to see if Horatio would drown. They take an element of the nature which benefits human beings to transform it into the worst nightmare for Horatio. However, this is subjective and object of interpretation. They’re used as some kind of set-ups and pay-offs, and you may call them image system, motifs or theme devices, etc. Motherless and penniless.” SymbolsĪnother way to analyse the story is to focus on the symbols used by the Coen Brothers to emphasise the story’s meaning. He lied to the public when he said he had found him “on the streets of London, England. Remeber the quote in the book: “The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” The Irish didn’t take pity on poor Horatio, to him the Artist was just a meal ticket. The Artist (Edwin Horatio Harrison): an armless and legless man who wants to recite the poem to more and more public so the Impresario would earn money and wouldn’t get rid of him.The Impresario or the Irish: make money.In order to establish the structure, we need to be aware of the protagonists’ desires or objectives. The tale’s theme is perhaps mercy and compassion with Shakespearean style monologues -what’s written in the book is from The Merchant of Venice- and we take three distinctive perspectives (or POV): the Artist, the Impresario and the public. “ A traveler in an antique land.” In the six stories of the film, all the protagonist are travelers: a singer with great aim (perhaps not always), a bank robber, the artist and the impresario, a gold seeker, a woman traveling West to an uncertain place and two strangers in a carriage. Just in the beginning of the screenplay for this tale we can find a synopsis of the whole film: We will focus on the third tale about The Artist and The Impresario/The Irishman. However, today we’ll take one of the stories from their recent film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) to explore structure and symbols. Recently, the Coen Brothers (Joel & Ethan) announced that Ethan doesn’t want to make movies anymore, according to their music composer Carter Burwell.
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