
This story is comparable to “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” in how absurd it is, though it differs in that it doesn’t have the joy of that story. The cinematography is beautiful, the music is great and if we’d had more time with characters it could have been a perfect Musical Western. This is what makes his death tragic, but he does get to go to Heaven and gets angel wings, so his story isn’t entirely tragic…especially compared to the stories that come up later. He is fun and funny and even though is willing to kill always treats people as a good person first and always has a song on his lips. This one was great as a musical and I love Tim Blake Nelson’s energy as Buster Scruggs.

It finally all comes to a head when the Man in Black finds him and it is the duel he finally loses, that brings his story to an end. The story follows Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) the Gunslinger as he goes about from town to town, taking out people who challenge him. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is one of the happiest of the tales, as even though death and destruction happen, Buster Scruggs always has a song on his lips and his sheer joy rubs off on the events throughout the story. I’m judging each story individually before an overall take on the whole, since though they are each connected in theme, it is still an anthology film. The name of the anthology also is the name of the first story within the anthology itself. Each story is haunted with tales of death and destruction as all are faced with choices told in a storybook fashion. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is a Western anthology that follows the tales of the gunslinger, the thief, the conman, the prospector, the cowboy and the bounty hunter. Lately they’ve been doing more collaborations but this is wholly a Coen Brothers film as they wrote, produced and directed this film. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is certainly up there with those films, but doesn’t quite reach their level of perfection.

“Fargo,” “Blood Simple” and “The Big Lewbowski” are some of my favorite films of all time and I love the desolation and farcical nature that is brought to so many of their dramas. In a release, they said they were “eternally grateful" to the Coens "for giving us the opportunity to write a cowboy duet between the living and the dead, and to Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson for bringing it to life.I am a huge Coen Brothers fan. On Tuesday, the duo released their own recording of the song.

Welch told Variety it was "kind of a dream assignment." They wrote the song after reading the script and having a conversation with Joel Coen. That's handled by stars Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson. Welch and Rawlings don't perform their composition in "Buster Scruggs," currently streaming on Netflix.

Welch and Rawlings previously worked with the Coen brothers on the landmark soundtrack for their 2000 film, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" While it earned the Grammy for Album of the Year, its lack of original songs made it ineligible for an Oscar. Last month, it was announced that only two songs would be performed on the show - a move that was met with immediate backlash. All five nominated songs will be performed on the Oscars telecast, though that wasn't always the plan.
