If I had to choose one of the most literary American directors of our time, I'd give my top vote to the Coen brothers.

(Left: Joel Coen; Right: Ethan Coen)

Since their debut film Blood Simple, the Coen brothers' films have been strongly postmodern and darkly humorous, with interlocking plots and a "snowballing" story of coincidence that reminds people of these sharp-edged filmmakers.

The Ballads of Buster Scruggs, the film presented at the Venice Film Festival and produced by Netflix, combines six separate short stories into one feature film, winning the Venice Best Original Screenplay. All six stories are set in the 18th-19th century American West, the mysterious and lawless Western world is the perfect stage for the Coen brothers' stories to unfold.

The six stories are distinctive in tone, showing the western world from all levels and perspectives. The distinctive acting style, precise editing rhythm, and the familiar abrupt turn of events in the world. Each story is full of the Coen brothers' whimsy, and each story is a fable full of dark humor.

One: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Synopsis: Wearing a white suit, the wanted cowboy Buster Scruggs is a famous marksman, although he is an outlaw but carry out their own principles, never trouble, but also never tolerate. He wandered alone and on horseback, and along the way there was inevitably some bloodshed. Finally he met another marksman and died at the muzzle of his gun.

Buster believes in "willingness to gamble," and it is unnecessary to get angry over something you can't change. After he was in a bar, he sat on a virtual poker game, but the cards laid down were really bad, and after looking at them, Buster regretted. It was a game he "did not want to bet on". But the rest of the group told him, "If you read the cards, you have to play." One man even threatened him with a gun (a violation of the store's rules about keeping weapons). Without the certainty of winning, Buster preferred to quit.

This story is an ironic use of "card games" and "duels": people often lose when they think they have a chance to win, just as Joe, armed with a weapon, and Buster, who is very self-confident, walk to the dueling place. In many cases, this "game of cards" is not the right to choose, you can only do is to choose to be open-minded, as in the beginning of Buster's monologue. At the time of embarking on this road, Buster has already made a good realization.

Two: Near Algodones

Synopsis: A desperate cowboy decides to rob a bank, but fails and is arrested. When he is about to be hanged, a group of Native Americans intercept and kill the enforcers; the cowboy is saved by a passing cattle rancher, but the cattle rancher is actually a cattle rustler, and the cowboy is framed and sent to the town to be executed.

The structure of this story is very simple, is the typical "Seinfeld" mode, with a sudden turn to show the fate of the day, the fate of man.

Before his death, the cowboy also and a girl under the bleachers on the eyes. This is a very cruel thing, after you are ready to accept the fate of death, you have a thirst for life, it is really the death of the torture. But at least, the executioner used a sack to help you close the eyes.

Three: Meal Ticket

Synopsis: A man relies on a handicapped orator with no limbs to make a living. But his increasingly meager income makes him no longer trust the young man, especially after he sees a "chicken that counts" attracting a large crowd, and he decides to replace his "actor".

This is one of the most literary concentrations in the entire film, especially in the lines of the disabled orator, quoting Shelley's "Osmundis", the story of Cain and Job in the Bible - Genesis, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, interspersed with Shakespeare's commercial poetry and lines from "The Tempest". Such speeches are destined to be baffling pastiches of text, but the orator's vivid Russian rendition still leaves many listeners in awe.

The story develops in increasingly cool blue shades, as the relationship between the man and the teenager undergoes a subtle transformation. In the end, he abandons the boy and gains a "genius castrati".

Four: All Gold Canyon

Synopsis: The old man who was looking for gold came to a land with great scenery, hoping to find a gold mine of his own. Just when he finally found the vein after countless days and nights of hard work, he was attacked from behind with a gun ......

The story is not original to the Coen brothers, but is adapted from the famous American short story writer Jack London's work of the same name, and the sentences appearing in the film are also quotations from the original work.

In this story, the attacker is a person who tries to get something for nothing, but is eventually killed by the old man who panned for gold; and when the old man left the place, the nature that generously gave him the gold mine just returned to peace but did not retaliate against him. Looking at the devastated cave, we need to wake up: not to retaliate, the time has not come.

In terms of technique, the fight between the old man and the raiders is both part of the story and a reflection of the whole story: the old man is weak and plundered, similar to nature; the raiders are strong and violent, similar to the destroyer of nature. Therefore, the story seems to be just a slogan of "green water and green mountain is the silver mountain", but its inner layers are still very rich, which is the charm of the Coen brothers' story.

Five: The Gal Who Got Rattled

Synopsis: Miss Longaberger is about to move to Oregon with a caravan for a potential marriage partner. When her brother dies of cholera on the way, Miss Longaber decides to move on, and wagon leader Billy Napp takes the opportunity to express his intention to marry her. But Miss Longaberger gets separated from the group for the sake of her dog, and drinks a bullet in an Indian attack.

In this short story, Miss Longaberger is in a state of "fright", a state of momentary "fright", such as when she drops her hands over her ears after she thinks her dog has been shot, and then is startled by two gunshots in quick succession.

It's a kind of uncertainty, such as the fact that her brother was supposed to arrange her marriage with her fiancé, but after his death there was no one to introduce her, and she had no family, so she didn't know whether to go to the unknown Oregon or to return to her hometown without any support.

The textual technique of this short story is the "displacement of the beginning and the end", where the opening quotation is actually the end of the story, and the end of the story suggests the beginning of numerous plots: how Mr. Arthur will phrase it, how Billy Knipe will react to it, and so on. The main line of the story is the frightened suicide of Miss Longobard, and the branch line is Billy Knipe's proposal to her, after the main line ends, the branch line is left as the ending to form a "polyphonic" story style, which greatly broadens the reading space of the text.

Six: The Mortal Remains

Synopsis: Five strangers with different identities: a French man, a fur hunter, a noblewoman, a fat and a thin bounty hunter (they want to transport the remains of a wanted man to the police station in town); travel together in a horse-drawn carriage to a common destination. During the noblewoman had a sudden attack of asthma, the French man asked the coachman to stop, but he did not listen. The coachman kept going until he stopped in front of a hotel.

The structure of this story is very simple, but it is very exciting. It shows the Coen brothers' great literary skills, and there are only two scenes throughout: inside the carriage and at the destination, but there is plenty of dramatic tension. The dialogue in the story is very lengthy and rich in meaning, and it is worth reading carefully. Here I would like to focus on two interpretations of the story: (1) The story is a real reference, that is, the five people travel together to a common destination, their identity is clear, and the destination is also clear (the film says it is Fort Morgan), and the coachman's reluctance to stop may only be out of some kind of will. They ended up staying at the same hotel. (2) This story is a false reference, symbolizing the whole process of people going to death. The two bounty hunters are equivalent to the ferryman, and the carriage that never slows down is the "time" that never stops. The end of the final stay is "death".

Let's look at the title of the story: the mortal remains, the original English name is the mortal remains, that is, the remains of mortal man. When the characters in the film realize that their situation is not right, we should also realize that the "remains" refers to the natural not the two bounty hunters to transport the remains, but the three passengers -

To expand a little more, it is everyone: no one will be immortal, all are temporarily active "remains".

This time I would like to focus on where the allegorical nature of the film comes from and where this allegorical nature is directed.

In this film, the Coen brothers use a lot of direct shots of the audience, that is, "breaking the fourth wall" shots, such as cowboy Buster's monologue, bounty hunters tell the "night man" story. The latter has a counterpoint, which we can also see as speaking to the opposite passenger, and is interpreted in both real and imaginary terms. The "fourth wall" is originally a theatrical term, in the three-way drama there is an imaginary wall between the audience and the stage actors, this mode of viewing emphasizes the authenticity of the theatrical performance, so that the audience can believe everything that happens on stage and thus enter the story. In cinema, it is to allow the audience to enter the screen story. "Breaking the fourth wall" is to let the characters on the screen interact with the audience, out of their own story world, so that the audience completely understand that this is fictional and not real, so as to achieve a "strangeness" effect of separation.

With their cold and profound gaze, the Coen brothers see through the absurd nature of the world and express it in their films. Only when we see this can we truly see the Coen brothers' films.

So, when you have been cheated by life again, you may sing "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" to console yourself.