It is said that people have a short attention span these days, with everything beyond the size of a tweet fleeting away too soon before they could grasp it. Well, it appears that the Cohen brothers decided to cater to such audience this time, presenting a collection of six rather small and totally unrelated stories featuring the typical Cohen'esque posse of equally peculiar and utterly disposable characters.
I won't deny it: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs wasn't the worst two hours of my life spent on watching the figures moving on screen. Each story had its share of charm, and the dialogues, although at times too witty for their own good (I wouldn't use the "pretentious" cliche, but there's a certain point after which a masterclass of weaving fancy words together becomes, let's say, a bit tedious), were still fun and enjoyable. But, behind a showcase of small-scale humor, the renowned filmmaker duo seems to have lost a bigger thing - the whole sense of "why". Those very "why"s that made us actually care about the characters' antics throughout all the previous Cohen brothers films - those fine but nonetheless omnipresent threads connecting the episodes together into a quirky but coherent and solid story.
Here there's no story. There's a theme - a frontier conquest one. It's of course fascinating, and there's nobody out there who would refuse watching those cowboys vs indians skits, or people recklessly digging for gold. So if the Cohen bros went for opening a theme park, I'd be the first to scream "shut up and take my money". But, from what I seem to remember, the guys are still in the movie business, and moviemaking-wise, this production was simply too hollow, if not weak. Not because they lost their sense of taste - but probably because they didn't seem to care to use it in the first place. After all, it's a Netflix production, and what could go wrong with yet another mini-series, right?
Here and now, approach of morn has stained the sky as well, but my trousers are sorrily intact. Well, I guess, as a certain someone would have said, this ain't that kind of movie bruv.
I won't deny it: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs wasn't the worst two hours of my life spent on watching the figures moving on screen. Each story had its share of charm, and the dialogues, although at times too witty for their own good (I wouldn't use the "pretentious" cliche, but there's a certain point after which a masterclass of weaving fancy words together becomes, let's say, a bit tedious), were still fun and enjoyable. But, behind a showcase of small-scale humor, the renowned filmmaker duo seems to have lost a bigger thing - the whole sense of "why". Those very "why"s that made us actually care about the characters' antics throughout all the previous Cohen brothers films - those fine but nonetheless omnipresent threads connecting the episodes together into a quirky but coherent and solid story.
Here there's no story. There's a theme - a frontier conquest one. It's of course fascinating, and there's nobody out there who would refuse watching those cowboys vs indians skits, or people recklessly digging for gold. So if the Cohen bros went for opening a theme park, I'd be the first to scream "shut up and take my money". But, from what I seem to remember, the guys are still in the movie business, and moviemaking-wise, this production was simply too hollow, if not weak. Not because they lost their sense of taste - but probably because they didn't seem to care to use it in the first place. After all, it's a Netflix production, and what could go wrong with yet another mini-series, right?
Here and now, approach of morn has stained the sky as well, but my trousers are sorrily intact. Well, I guess, as a certain someone would have said, this ain't that kind of movie bruv.