The ballad of Buster Scruggs

I saw THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS last night (Netflix). This film was characteristically weird and hard to classify, but I liked it very much, especially the last two vignettes. It begins what I believe is a parody not only of the singing cowboy genre but of what might be the worst film I have ever seen: HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER. Then it proceeds to get progressively more serious with each episode. I think it includes a fine critique of our culture in the episode called "The Meal Ticket," where high culture is celebrated and then shows its vulnerabilities. The Orphean figure who recites Shakespeare is the perfect symbol for how hard it is for "beauty" to "hold a plea . . . " It is one thing to show how art cannot compete with greed and stupidity, but quite another to show how appealing high culture once was to the roughest of Americans. The film ends with a fine little piece of theatre in the stage-coach episode. The concatenation of so many different tones and moods left me a bit dizzy, but I think the Coens always intend to keep the viewer off balance. I look forward to hearing what other members of this club have to say about this film. If this post ever gets approved. I think I'll watch THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS again and that it will become one of my favorite movies