Starring: Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Stephen Root, Liam Neeson, Harry Melling, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, Granger Hines, Bill Heck, JonJo O’Neill, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, Tyne Daly, Chelcie Ross
Distributor: Netflix
Runtime: 133 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2019
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After 20 years and more of writing and directing films, the Coen Brothers have won many awards, been present at festivals, have built up a great number of admirers around the world. This film was originally a series of six stories about the West. They decided they would put them together as a feature film and were taken on by Netflix.
The range of stories is quite vast, familiar stories from the west but given some twists, often with some wry comments. The tone is set with the first story which has the title of the whole film, enhanced by the presence of Tim Blake Nelson (reminding audiences of O Brother, Where Art Thou), riding through a vast canyon, singing ‘Water, cool clear, water’. He is ingratiating, cheerful, talking to camera – going into a remote bar to play cards, refused whiskey, finishing up killing everyone with speed and skills, gauging how to shoot, using a mirror. His luck runs out in the next town as he is hunted down by a bounty hunter, fails, but is seen cheerfully literally winging his way to heaven!
James Franco is the focus of Near Algodones, a bank robber in the desert, confronting a teller, Stephen Root, who turns the tables on him with concealed rifles. However, the robber is taken by a posse, judged, roped to a branch only for Indians to attack the posse and kill them. While he is rescued by a rustler, another posse takes him and he is sentenced to death by hanging – with a wry joke when he asks the blubbering victim next to him whether this is his first time!
The next story, Meal Ticket is rather sombre, Liam Neeson as a travelling impresario providing entertainment for remote communities, in the dead of winter, using his wagon as a stage and his artist, Harry Melling, a man with no legs and no arms, reciting everything from Shelley to Lincoln.
And the story after that is fairly straightforward with Tom Waits as a gold prospector, landscapes this time lush and green. This seems a happy story until the prospector is betrayed by a companion after his gold, but, ironically, the tables reversed.
The Gal who Got Rattled is a rather longer story, opening in one of those boarding houses of the 19th century with some of those present about to go on a wagon train journey to the west. The focus is on Zoe Kazan, a rather prim young woman, expecting to go west to be married, but her plans being radically changed. Bill Heck is sympathetic as one of the hands for the wagon train. He is attracted to the young woman, awkwardly but politely proposes, she accepting. A story which seems to be moving towards a happy ending but has, perhaps, the saddest ending of all.
And what to make of the last story? The Mortal Remains? A stagecoach with an odd selection of passengers, English, Irish, French, a trapper and a rather haughty lady discuss life in their lives, finally arriving at a mysterious hotel. A death story? A ghost story?
A mixed bag of stories but also with the Coen Brothers touch!
Peter Malone MSC is an Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.
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