The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Released 2018, directed by Joel Coen

From Blood Simple, the Coen brothers have had an interest in taking genres with a healthy germ of nihilism already curled within them, and growing said germ to overshadowing proportions. This is not precisely what they do with the Western in Buster Scruggs. Rather this is an exercise in illustrating how the Old Testament approach to morality - which so often lies at the Western’s core - how this system, under which the slightest deviation must be met with crushing revision, is, when applied unsparingly enough, indistinguishable from any moral system at all. But, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Note that this is a Christian film: its message is that man does not want – should be terrified of – what he deserves.

Summaries of the six stories contained here:

Death-machine as agent of perfect justice, and vice-versa; also as singing cowboy (note that Buster is a gloss on the Judge from Blood Meridian, and that both derive their power from realizing that they exist in a work of fiction, whereas their enemies plod in the fixity of reality).

An unholy fool fails to benefit from the protection of heaven (the top-hatted Native Americans may also be from Blood Meridian).

Art is a form of commerce, and both are outside the will of the Lord.

A hungry man discovers a nest containing four eggs. He considers taking them all, but in the end takes only one. Because he took one egg he is shot in the back; because he left three he lives.

A woman lacks faith.

The damned.