Good to see. No doubt all the London fans will be keen to watch it.
Sorry, that was “Stewart Edward White,” not Steward. :smack:
I’ve been watching this and I think it’s great. Very solid and eerie entertainment. Just finished the Girl Who Got Rattled (“It was NOT a contagious cough!”) and re-watched Buster Scruggs. That duet at the end of that vignette is awesome.
Only the last one to go.
I often struggle with finding themes in stories so I apologize if this is exceedingly obvious to everyone else, but I was intrigued by the connections between the characters in “The Mortal Remains” and the characters in the other stories. “The Mortal Remains” begins with the dandy singing and the movie begins with Buster Scruggs, also a dandy, singing. The Irishman (Brendan Gleeson) is a big guy who sings an Irish ballad just like Liam Neeson in “Meal Ticket”. The trapper and the prospector from “All Gold Canyon” are two peas in a pod. Tyne Daly is the only woman in the wagon just as Zoe Kazan is the only female protagonist in the other stories. Both of their stories involve husbands - actual in the case of “The Mortal Remains”, potential in the case of “The Girl Who Got Rattled”. Both of them were rattled by the idea of dying, but went through with it in the end - metaphorically in “The Mortal Remains”, actual in “The Girl Who Got Rattled”. As for the last two, James Franco and the Frenchman, in addition to the name thing they both met death with a c’est la vie attitude.
I know the theory has holes in it - neither the Impresario nor the Prospector die in their stories - but there are too many connections for it to be an accident. What I don’t understand, and I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this, is why? Are they just fun callbacks to the earlier stories or is there a deeper thread here I’m missing? Are they representations of the theories argued about in the stagecoach? They are all like the people in the other stories, and they are all different than the people in the other stories.
Good thread. I watched this a couple of nights ago but wasn’t paying close enough attention. Great commentary here and I’m going to be watching it again. I’m a big fan of Coen brothers, though my ranking of their films often differs from the accepted wisdom.
Just finished this and thought it was terrific. I liked each of the stories- with The Girl Who Got Rattled, All Gold Canyon, and Buster rising to the top.
Agreed! For me, All Gold Canyon and Ballad of Buster Scruggs are tied for first place, the others tied for second. Loved it.
Tyhat’s the way prospectors worked, pan upstream until the color stops then come back. He should have been panning in the stream, though not poking around in the meadow. I suppose it was to cut to the chase yet leave traces to show show how he narrowed in on Mr. Pocket.
I was proud to notice how the bloodstain kept growing. I thought, “He’s still bleeding; back-shooter’s in for a surprise.”
My ears pricked up when the bounty hunter referred to himself and his partner as “reapers,” then again when they were quite certain the driver would not stop for anything, then it all solidified when they all got down from the coach but none of them had any luggage–then the coach continued on but turned around and went back the way it came, which means this is literally the end of the line. It was very nicely done, it’s very easy to overlook the clues in that one.
Also how the woman was going to finally see her husband for the first time in two years, although I admit that I missed all of the clues when I watched it. I still don’t get the deal with the dead body up top. Maybe that guy is going to Hell and the others to Heaven.
Did you get shot in the back before you could finish your post?
I saw this yesterday. The Franco story was pretty weak, but I enjoyed the other stories.
But even that minor tale had many entertaining moments. (Working from memory):
- The extremely isolated bank.
- The teller’s “Okay, try and rob me, we’ll have some fun” attitude, and the mounted rifles.
- The robber trying to get his horse to come to the well.
- The teller’s ridiculous armored charge.
- The hanging posse asking for his horse. The robber’s stunned, “what’s my sentence?”.
- The man getting an arrow in his neck, breaking it off, then immediately getting another arrow in his neck.
- The nice shot of the arrow fired at the fleeing posse guy.
- The painted face NA giving the robber the psych-out.
- The horse grazing ever further afield.
- And, of course, the punch line.
[Moderating]
I had noticed the misspelling in the thread title, but not being familiar with the work, had assumed that it was deliberate, in an attempt to capture a rustic accent. Now that it’s been called to my attention, I’m fixing it.
So a couple of questions. I don’t know if these are obvious or open to interpretation.
[spoiler]1. Did the prospector die after being shot, and was everything after that just his dream in the afterlife? An old man being shot through the lungs and intestines with no medical care should have been fatal, but he just shrugged it off. And then he has a happy ending where he kills the killer, mines a huge amount of gold and then goes home. It all seemed too happy and succinct.
- What happened on the stagecoach episode? Were the two guys bounty hunters or the grim reaper? I noticed all the buildings near the hotel were obviously fake, and the stagecoach driver drove off with everyone’s luggage still on the stagecoach. Also the layout of the hotel, with the bright light at the top of the staircase was an after death metaphor.
So did all 3 of them die? Were any hints given as to how they died, or how they ended up together? [/spoiler]
That was my impression too, which makes it doubly dark. After killing his meal ticket all he has is a useless chicken.
Not entirely useless.
I wondered about that same thing in Post #8, but now feel the events should be taken at face value.
Reasons:
— The story follows Jack London’s original tale very closely, and London doesn’t drop any hints that he’s writing about supernatural events. When the prospector leaves the valley with his gold, London describes the area as being disturbed/defaced by the prospector’s diggings. He also has the prospector have a rougher recovery.
—Someone upthread was pleased to notice that the Coen’s had the prospector’s wound continue to bleed while he was faking out the bushwacker, because that indicated that the heart was still pumping.
——
As for the details of “The Mortal Remains,” I don’t think the story is wrapped up neatly with one correct explanation for every question. That’s a little frustrating, but also it gives the viewer more to chew on.
Sure but a ticket only good for one meal … and not including any sides.
Yes. “Superb” is the word. It wasn’t one of my two favorites, but was easily as good as the other 4 stories.
That didn’t occur to me until I read your post. I assumed that Neeson bought both the gimmick and the chicken, but it makes more Coen Bros. sense for him to have been conned into believing it was a magic chicken. I like it.
This was much better the second time I watched it.
Did anyone notice on the mortal remains that Thigpen said he was the distractor, while Clarence did the thumping? But in the actual stagecoach it was Clarence who did the singing/distracting while Thigpen thumped the floor with his cane?
Also Clarence started singing right when the atmosphere went from day to night.
I wonder what the significance of that was.