"The Ballad.." is not just the Coens joyriding into the old west as the trailer seems to suggest. A zany love declaration to old America with a few songs...a bit like in "O brother, where art thou?".
I found the "Ballad.." closer to some of the Coens most cryptic stuff like "Barton Fink" or "A Serious Man".
Here a bouncy light-hearted opening sequences slowly gives way to an uneasy feelings of impending doom.
The first episode "THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS", A singing lonesome cowboy (Tim Blake Nelson) rides into town. it's pure Coen: cartooneque and unpredictable. Tex Avery would have loved it.
"NEAR ALGODONES" Starts with another lonesome cowboy (James Franco) about to enter a bank. You can guess the rest but there are few surprise encounters and a brilliant action scene that is as good as those in Innaritu's "The Revenant".
"MEAL TICKET" is the most haunting and gloomy episode. Harry Melling plays a young actor in an itinerant one man show managed by an unrecognisable Liam Neeson. Here the Coens abandon their usual zany camerawork and eccentricities as the story is straight forward and there is nothing to add.
ALL GOLD CANYON follows another lonesome figure, this time an old gold prospector (Tom Waits) wandering into a beautiful valley.
THE GALL WHO GOT RATTLED Set in the epic of the Oregon trail we follow the journey of a young girl (Zoe Kazan) her brother and their pet dog. Compared to the other Segments it's more of a short novel which for its barren landscapes, gritty characters and effective action scenes could have easily been renamed as " No Country for Young Women".
The last chapter, "THE MORTAL REMAINS" deals with another Western classic the stagecoach. This episode is the most enigmatical and evokes the equally cryptic opening sequence of the Yiddish village in "A serious man".
So that's the Coens in a nutshell: the Wackiness and the Inquietude...they did it again.
The first episode "THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS", A singing lonesome cowboy (Tim Blake Nelson) rides into town. it's pure Coen: cartooneque and unpredictable. Tex Avery would have loved it.
"NEAR ALGODONES" Starts with another lonesome cowboy (James Franco) about to enter a bank. You can guess the rest but there are few surprise encounters and a brilliant action scene that is as good as those in Innaritu's "The Revenant".
"MEAL TICKET" is the most haunting and gloomy episode. Harry Melling plays a young actor in an itinerant one man show managed by an unrecognisable Liam Neeson. Here the Coens abandon their usual zany camerawork and eccentricities as the story is straight forward and there is nothing to add.
ALL GOLD CANYON follows another lonesome figure, this time an old gold prospector (Tom Waits) wandering into a beautiful valley.
THE GALL WHO GOT RATTLED Set in the epic of the Oregon trail we follow the journey of a young girl (Zoe Kazan) her brother and their pet dog. Compared to the other Segments it's more of a short novel which for its barren landscapes, gritty characters and effective action scenes could have easily been renamed as " No Country for Young Women".
The last chapter, "THE MORTAL REMAINS" deals with another Western classic the stagecoach. This episode is the most enigmatical and evokes the equally cryptic opening sequence of the Yiddish village in "A serious man".
So that's the Coens in a nutshell: the Wackiness and the Inquietude...they did it again.
