The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | 132 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ethan and Joel Coen |
| script | Ethan and Joel Coen |
| production | Ethan and Joel Coen, Megan Ellison , Sue Naegle , Robert Graf |
| music | Carter Burwell |
| camera | Bruno Delbonnel |
| cut | " Roderick Jaynes " |
| occupation | |
| |
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a western by Ethan and Joel Coen , which celebrated its world premiere on August 31, 2018 as part of the Venice Film Festival and was included on Netflix on November 16, 2018 .
The film received three nominations at the 2019 Academy Awards .
action
The film comprises six self-contained episodes set in the Wild West.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is about the experiences of the songster Buster Scruggs. In the wilderness, he wants to have a drink in a small bar, but meets with hostility from everyone present. His stay ends with the shooting of all the guests and the bartender. Then he arrives at Frenchman's Gulch , where he goes to the local saloon to finally get a drink. At the entrance he hands in his weapons according to the house rules. He takes the place of a fled player at a poker table and sees that he has taken over the so-called Dead Man's hand . He is informed by a great man named Joe that now that he has seen the hand, he has to play too. Joe threatens Buster with his Colt, and the unarmed singer kicks several times on a loose wooden slat on the table, causing Joe's hand to shoot his own face several times on the other side. After a short silence, Buster sings a happy song and the rest of the crowd joins in. The brother of the dead Joe then challenges him to a duel on the main street of the village. The skillful gunslinger manages to shoot away all five fingers of his firing hand from his opponent and finally knocks him down with the sixth bullet - with his back to the target and with the help of a pocket mirror. Then a polite young man appears and he too challenges Buster to a duel. But the man pulls even faster than the songster and wins the duel with a shot in the head. Busters soul rises from his corpse and rises to heaven with a lyre in hand and wings on his back, singing a song in duet with the victorious Sagittarius.
Near Algodones
A young cowboy walks into a bank in nowhere and tries to ambush the only employee. He bends down behind the counter and quickly fires three shotguns hidden behind it, but without hitting the robber. He climbs behind the counter and takes the money. Outside, a shot hits his sack of money, which he has to leave behind and hide behind a well. The bank clerk appears, protected by a wash basin, pans and pots. He can penetrate undamaged to the robber and put it out of action. The cowboy is conscious again on his horse, opposite a group of law enforcement officers, his neck is in a noose that is tied to a tree. Suddenly a horde of Comanches appears and kills all law enforcement officers, but leaves the young man behind. His horse is now moving forward in search of food on the ground, and he threatens to slide down. In the distance he sees a drover riding up, whom he calls and who finally saves him. The two ride together, but are stopped relatively quickly by another group of law enforcement officers, as the stranger is a wanted cattle thief. In the nearest town, the cowboy is now on the gallows with some other criminals and is looking towards his end. Before he is executed, he sees a pretty young woman among the spectators who is smiling at him. Then the executioner puts a hood on him and his life comes to an end.
Meal ticket
An aging, taciturn impresario travels with his theater car and his only artist, Harrison, through the prairie and stops at various settlements. Harrison, who has neither arms nor legs, always sits on a chair and recites poems like Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias , the story of Cain and Abel or Shakespeare's sonnets , as well as the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln. After the end of each performance, the impresario walks around among the audience and collects donations. He uses it to buy food for himself and the boy or pay prostitutes for sex while Harrison is in the room but is not allowed to watch. After a performance in which only three people are watching and none of them donate anything, the impresario notices another moving attraction that casts a spell over all the local residents. A chicken can do simple arithmetic and will pick the correct one from a series of hanging boards with numbers drawn on it. He buys the chicken from its owner and moves on. He stops at a bridge that runs over a raging river and throws a large stone down into the water. He returns to his car. Then you see him riding away, in the car there is only his new attraction, the chicken.
All gold canyon
A nameless prospector arrives in a valley in which he suspects gold. After several days of hard work, he can finally narrow down an area and dig a deep hole, but then wants to go to sleep. Before he goes to sleep, he sees a great horned owl . The next day he makes the eagle owl's nest on a tall tree and steals the four eggs inside. The mother of the not yet hatched birds observes him from a tree opposite and the prospector lays three of the eggs back. On the third day in the valley the hole is finally deep enough that the man comes across a gold vein . But suddenly a young man appears behind him, who seems to have been watching him for some time and who shoots him in the back. While the prospector lies face first in the ground, the murderer smokes a cigarette with relish and then jumps into the hole. But the old man is not dead and is wrestling with the attacker. Eventually he can grab his weapon and shoot him. He cleans his apparently non-fatal wound in the adjoining stream and leaves the valley with two full sacks of gold.
The Gal Who Got Rattled
A trek is on its way to Oregon , including the young Alice Longabaugh and her older brother Gilbert, a clumsy businessman. At the destination a wealthy man is waiting for Alice to marry. But one night Gilbert dies of cholera and leaves his sister alone. Since Gilbert's dog, named President Pierce after President Franklin Pierce , is driving the column to the edge of madness with his barking, one of the two trek leaders, Billy Knapp, wants to shoot him. But the dog survives and runs away. The next problem is that Matt, a boy Gilbert hired to drive the car, is getting $ 400. The dead man had promised him half of it on arrival at Fort Laramie . Alice suspects that the money either doesn't exist or was buried with her brother and reveals herself to Billy, who is attracted to the woman. Billy offers Alice to marry her in Fort Laramie, leave the trek to his partner Mr. Arthur, pay off Matt and live with her on a farm. Alice accepts the offer and Billy informs Mr. Arthur that this will be their last trip together. One morning Alice is nowhere to be found. Mr. Arthur, who goes to look for her on his horse, then meets the woman some distance away who was tracked down by President Pierce . A group of Indians approaches and Arthur equips Alice with a revolver so that she could shoot herself in an emergency so as not to be captured, as the Indians would do much worse to her. Mr. Arthur fights fiercely with the Indians, but can drive all but one out, whom he shoots with his rifle. When he returned to Alice, she shot herself as she was told. The man goes back to the trek with a queasy feeling.
The Mortal Remains
An Englishman (Thigpen), an Irishman (Clarence), a Frenchman (René), a fine lady (Mrs. Betjeman) and a trapper are in a carriage on the way to Fort Morgan . On the roof is a corpse whose identity only Thigpen and Clarence know. The trapper tells of his relationship with a Native American woman who, due to a lack of language skills, kept herself alive by expressing emotions. He draws a comparison of people, who would all have the same basic needs, with the animals that he hunts. Mrs. Betjeman, a devout Christian, replies that she divides people into two groups - sincere and sinners. She justifies this with the fact that her husband, from whom she was separated for three years and whom she wants to meet in Fort Morgan, is a former wandering Chautauqua who was very concerned with morality and spirituality . René, on the other hand, thinks that people develop according to their individual experiences. He argues that in the three years of separation, the concept of love for Mr. Betjerman may have changed depending on whether he cheated or not. Mrs. Betjerman gets angry and René asks the driver to stop, but he drives on undeterred. According to Thigpen, he would have strict instructions never to stop before arriving at the destination. The Irishman sings a melancholy song and so can calm the woman down. Then Thigpen and Clarence reveal themselves as bounty hunters . While Thigpen always involves the wanted in conversations and thus distracts them, his partner is the executor who turns off the targets. Arrived at a hotel in Fort Morgan, the bounty hunters fetch their prey from the roof and bring it into the building under the shocked eyes of the others.
production
Staff and construction
Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen . The brothers have been nominated for an Oscar 14 times so far. In 2008, No Country for Old Men was recognized for best film, the brothers for best director and best adapted screenplay. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was originally designed as a six-part series, but it ultimately became a film, but it retains the anthological structure of the series, so that it consists of six separate stories in the Wild West and through the title character, Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs , is held together. The film is divided into the six storylines listed above.
The plot of the part All Gold Canyon corresponds to the short story All Gold Canyon by Jack London , which appeared in 1906 in his work Moon-Face & Other Stories .
Commenting on their motivation for making an anthology film , they said: “We have always loved anthology films, especially those made in Italy in the 1960s. Often, films about the same story by different directors have even been made in parallel. After writing some western stories, we decided to make a movie like that too. We always hoped to win the best directors of the present for the project. We were very lucky that they both agreed. "
Barbara Schweizerhof from epd Film explains that the Coen brothers tried out a slightly different tone in each episode, from musical cabaret to bitter grotesque, romantic drama to horror tales. Each story brings a different punch line and a different side of their masterfully precise directing talent to advantage, which is why this film only comes into its own in the aftermath.
Filming, casting and dubbing
The shooting took part in the Panhandle of Nebraska instead. Further recordings were made in New Mexico , where the Coen brothers had already shot No Country for Old Men and True Grit . The cameraman was Bruno Delbonnel , with whom the Coen brothers had already worked for their film Inside Llewyn Davis . Mary Zophres was responsible for the design of the costumes .
The cast of Tim Blake Nelson for the title role of Buster Scruggs was announced in the summer of 2017. Other actors involved include Brendan Gleeson , Liam Neeson , James Franco and Tyne Daly , among others . The musician Tom Waits , who last played in a film in 2012, plays a gold digger in an idyllic, lonely valley.
The German dubbing was created based on the dialogue direction by Rainer Raschewski and a dialogue script by Jan Fabian Krüger on behalf of RRP Media UG, Berlin.
| actor | Voice actor | role |
|---|---|---|
| Tim Blake Nelson | Frank Röth | Buster scruggs |
| Zoe Kazan | Janin Stenzel | Alice Longabaugh |
| Alejandro Patiño | Reinhard Scheunemann | barkeeper |
| Jiji Hise | Elke Appelt | Bawd |
| Bill Heck | Florian Hoffmann | Billy Knapp |
| James Franco | Kim Hasper | cowboy |
| Clancy Brown | André Beyer | Curly Joe |
| Saul Rubinek | Gerald Schaale | the Frenchman |
| David Krumholtz | Jens-Uwe Bogadtke | the Frenchman |
| Brendan Gleeson | Roland Hemmo | the Irishman |
| Willie Watson | Bastian Sierich | boy |
| Jesse hatches | Christoph Drobig | Drover |
| Chelcie Ross | Kaspar Eichel | Trappers |
| Jefferson Mays | Gerrit Hamann | Gilbert Longabaugh |
| Liam Neeson | Bernd Rumpf | impresario |
| Tyne Daly | Traudel Haas | lady |
| Tom Waits | Ekkehardt Belle | prospector |
| Stephen Root | Tobias Lelle | Plate |
| Ethan Dubin | Marc Bluhm | Frosted |
| Grainger Hines | Jan Spitzer | Mr. Arthur |
| Prudence Wright Holmes | Katharina Lopinski | Pension lady |
| Michael Cullen | Thomas Kästner | Judge |
| Austin Rising | Nikolaus Grobe | Administrator |
Film music and publication
The score was composed by Carter Burwell , who had previously worked with the Coen brothers on True Grit and No Country for Old Men . The soundtrack for the film was released on November 16, 2018 by Milan Records as a download, on November 30, 2018 on CD and on December 21, 2018 on vinyl. The soundtrack features a song by Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson , who starred in the film as Buster Scruggs. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performed the song When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings from the film at the Academy Awards.
The film premiered on August 31, 2018 at the Venice Film Festival , where it was screened in the main competition and was nominated for the Golden Lion . In October 2018 there were screenings at the New York Film Festival and the London Film Festival . The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was originally supposed to be shown as a six-part series on Netflix in the course of 2018, and was finally released there as a film on November 16, 2018. The film was previously released in selected US cinemas on November 9, 2018.
reception
Reviews
So far, the film has received approval from 91 percent of Rotten Tomatoes critics and achieved an average rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10 points. The film also came second in the Best-Reviewed Westerns 2018 category at the 20th Annual Golden Tomato Awards .
Stephanie Zacharek by the magazine Time finds, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was a story out of a fairytale book that is fun and this that have been passed down from generation to generation in a way that we tell stories again and again. The film is also interspersed with melancholy.
Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian explains that the film is in many ways an old-school-Western, and even if there is something funny or satirical, that does not mean that it is pure pastiche.
Adam Woodward of Little White Lies says The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is absolutely gorgeous and a movie about America, full of bloody revenge scenes, religious zeal, romantic idealism, slippery salesmanship, incoherent chatter and sunny optimism.
Andreas Borcholte from Spiegel Online thinks that an episode in the middle of the film is outstanding in which Tom Waits plays an old gold prospector who falls with a pick and spade into an idyllic valley of the purest nature, which has been filmed for minutes. Borcholte also believes that the criticism of civilization practiced in the film with a mallet works, is due to the unbroken talent of the Coens: “The pioneers of young North America, two women are also there, are ravishingly deconstructed here in all their tragicomic futility - but not on them cheap westerns from yesterday tour, but with a lot of feeling for difficult times in unknown territory. Which would have brought you back to the political and social wild west landscape. "
Katja Nicodemus from Zeit Online quotes an armless and legless actor who at the end of his monologue in a chapter of the film uses a sentence from Lincoln's Gettysburg speech about America's democratic self-image: “And let the people's government through the people and for the people, not disappear from the earth. ”The Coen brothers had always done a lot to evade their films from ostensible political interpretations, but here they left no doubt as to what had become of Lincoln's American vision, According to Nicodemus: "The actor is being replaced by a more successful show with a 'calculating' chicken and eliminated in a terrible way by his employer." In The Ballad of Buster Scruggs , the Coens took the violence to the extreme, exaggerated and condensed it into black humor Punch lines, so Nicodemus.
Awards
The following is a selection of awards and nominations:
Adelaide Film Festival 2018
- Nomination for Best Picture ( Ethan and Joel Coen )
Art Directors Guild Awards 2019
- Nomination in the category Period Film ( Jess Gonchor )
Artios Awards 2019
- Nomination in the Big Budget Comedy Feature category (Ellen Chenoweth, Jo Edna Boldin, Susanne Scheel, Marie AK McMaster)
Hollywood Music in Media Awards 2018
- Nomination for Best Score - Fiction Film ( Carter Burwell )
Venice International Film Festival 2018
- Nomination for the Golden Lion (Ethan and Joel Coen)
- Award for Best Screenplay (Ethan and Joel Coen)
Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards 2019
- Nomination in the category Best Special Makeup Effects (Christien Tinsley, Corey Welk and Rolf Keppler)
National Board of Review Awards 2018
- Inclusion in the top ten films
- Nomination for the best adapted screenplay
- Nomination for Best Costumes (Mary Zophres)
- Nomination for best film song (" When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings ", Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson)
Screen Actors Guild Awards 2019
- Nomination for the best stunt ensemble
World Soundtrack Awards 2019
- Nomination for Best Movie Song of the Year ("When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings")
Web links
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in the German dubbing index
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Official website for the movie from Netflix
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Screenplay for the film by Netflix (PDF)
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in the program of the Film Festival of Venice (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.moviejones.de/news/news-coens-western-neue-details-zu-the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs_33234.html
- ↑ http://www.filmstarts.de/serien/21533.html
- ^ David Morgan: The Coen Brothers on "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" (en) . In: CBS News , October 4, 2018. Retrieved November 17, 2018.
- ↑ Monique Stibbe: Suddenly a movie: The Coen brothers enter the Oscar race with “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”. In: filmstarts.de, July 25, 2018.
- ↑ Kristopher Tapley: Surprise! The Coens' 'Ballad of Buster Scruggs' Is a Film and It's Headed for Oscar Season. In: Variety, July 25, 2018.
- ↑ https://www.epd-film.de/meldung/2018/venedig-vom-mangel-patriotismus-bis-zum-mangel-originalitaet
- ↑ Adrian Gomesz: Coen Brothers to begin production of 'Ballad of Buster Scruggs' in NM. In: Albuquerque Journal, June 28, 2017.
- ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/ballad-buster-scruggs-review-1139035 - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
- ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/netflix-lands-coen-brothers-tv-series-ballad-buster-scruggs-1028049
- ↑ Carter Burwell to Score Netflix's 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs'. In: filmmusicreporter.com, October 11, 2017
- ↑ http://filmmusicreporter.com/2018/10/01/milan-records-to-release-the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs-soundtrack/
- ↑ https://pitchfork.com/news/coen-brothers-the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs-soundtrack-announced/
- ↑ http://filmmusicreporter.com/2019/02/01/gillian-welch-david-rawlings-to-perform-when-a-cowboy-trades-his-spurs-for-wings-from-the-ballad-of -buster-scruggs-at-oscars /
- ^ Jordan Raup: 56th New York Film Festival Main Slate Announced. In: filmlinc.org, August 7, 2018.
- ↑ Suddenly a movie: The Coen brothers enter the Oscar race with "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs". In. Focus Online, July 25, 2018.
- ↑ https://www.serienjunkies.de/news/ballad-buster-scruggs-netflix-projekt-91397.html
- ↑ http://www.filmstarts.de/nachrichten/18521825.html
- ↑ https://www.kino-zeit.de/news-features/aktuelles/netflix-bringt-roma-vor-streaming-start-ins-kino
- ↑ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 11, 2019. Note: The Tomatometer is the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critics who gave the film a positive rating.
- ↑ https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-westerns-2018/
- ↑ http://time.com/5384013/venice-review-ballad-of-buster-scruggs-coen-brothers/
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/31/the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs-review-coen-brothers-western
- ↑ https://lwlies.com/festivals/the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs-venice-film-festival-review/
- ^ Andreas Borcholte: Western films in Venice: Guns and talks. In: Spiegel Online, September 2, 2018.
- ↑ https://www.zeit.de/2018/37/filmfestspiele-venedig-historische-stoffe-the-favourite
- ↑ https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/2018/09/2018-adelaide-film-festival-full-program-launch/
- ↑ Kristopher Tapley: 'Buster Scruggs', 'Black Panther', 'Haunting of Hill House' Nominated for Art Directors Guild Awards. In: Variety, January 7, 2019.
- ↑ 2018 Hollywood Music in Media Awards Nominations Announced. In: filmmusicreporter.com, October 16, 2018.
- ↑ Zack Sharf: National Board of Review 2018 Winners: 'Green Book' Named Best Film, Lady Gaga Best Actress. In: indiewire.com, November 27, 2018.
- ↑ Paul Sheehan: 2019 SAG Awards nominations: Full list of Screen Actors Guild Awards nominees. In: goldderby.com, December 12, 2018.
- ↑ 2019 World Soundtrack Awards Composer of the Year Nominations Announced. In: filmmusicreporter.com, August 12, 2019.