"Death is the ultimate beauty. Death is the rejection of all understanding. Life is not the opposite of death. Death lurks in life."
There are always only two propositions expounded in the film, life or death.
I prefer movies about "death" to those about "survival".
This preference has a long history. When I was young, I read Mr. Lu Xun's "Wild Grass", which said that the past life has died. I rejoice in this death because by this I know that it lived. The life of death has decayed. I rejoice in this corruption, because by this I know that it is not yet empty.
It was at this time that I gradually began to understand the poetry of death.
After watching "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", I insisted more on my preference. This film is a hymn about "death".
The whole film begins with a lot of noise, with sharpshooters, fights, hangings, shootings, gold panning, massacres, suicides, deaths, ballads, crippled poets, fables, love, and meditation......
When all these elements are present in a movie, many viewers may find it a little disorganized.
But when it became The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by the Coen Brothers, it all seemed so natural.
"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is not a western in the traditional sense. There are six stories told in the film, and each story is independent, except that "death" is the eternal core, All other elements are "green leaves".
What is the west like?
Whenever the sun goes down, I sit on the slightly fishy stone by the river and look at the sky that is about to dim, I can always think of the "Western Past", which was an amazing experience.
On the road leading to the unknown, all the people are going westward, desolate, and unpopulated.
They say that is freedom.
What is the American West like?
Barbaric, empty and full of crises, but full of opportunities and dreams.
American Western movies and Chinese martial arts movies are the two most distinctive movie genres. Today, Western movies have become a thing of the past, and martial arts movies have become a thing of the past.
From a geographical point of view, Western films depict films from the era of the Great Western Development.
Of course, Western movies do not use this as the material, but only as the background. Although there are some distortions to the true face of geography and history, the romantic reality constructed by cowboys, gangsters, sharpshooters and love is enough to make people feel Immerse yourself in it and forget the truth and the false.
"The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" has all the elements of a western movie, but it's a movie about "death."
"The end of life is nothing but death, and the meaning of death is nothing but rebirth or eternal sleep. Death is not the loss of life, but the passage of time."
Death is a kind of decay, and everything that ever existed will come to such an end, and so will Western movies.
The first story is the death of the sharpshooter, the symbol of the west and the beginning of its decline.
The second story is the death of wisdom. It takes wisdom to survive in the west, and wisdom is sometimes more important than weapons.
The third story is a poetic death, and the west is of course poetic. "The desert is solitary and the smoke is straight, and the long river is setting the yen" is the best portrayal.
The fourth story is the death of the land, people digging for wealth in the west, destroying the soil and leaving with wounds that can no longer be repaired.
The fifth story is the death of love. The love of the west irrigates this desolate land with a natural enthusiasm.
The sixth story, Death of the West, goes to the final place in the exploration of death.
There are many ways to portray "death", and this "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" by the Coen brothers may not be the best way, but it is the most unsatisfactory way.
"Death is the final destination shared by the great and the mortal. The ardent poet sings the love song of life, while the cool philosopher says: "Death is the triumph of the laws of nature." "
The wild west has become a thing of the past, and the life-and-death, love-hate entanglements that have been staged have become a thing of the past. In the face of nature, this is just a long blooming and fading away.
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