Buster Scruggs: It’s A Song That Does You In (Spoilers)

I’ve watched this movie four times now (thanks influenza), and it’s a brilliant companion piece to True Grit as well as being a beautiful series of vignettes in its own right.When I first watched the film, I took the themes to be obsolescence; being bested by your better; being replaced; the eventuality of meeting your maker.But I think like the two bard-pistoleros of the title story it may run simpler than that. It may be a song that does you in.For Scruggs himself, it was The Kid’s soulful ballad (and a Dead Man’s hand of Aces over Eights).For The Limbless Actor, his death is foretold by the Impresario’s drunken song about drowning someone at the river.For the Bushwhacker, his death was Mother McCree sung by Tom Waits’ Prospector.Franco’s Cowboy and Kazan’s Alice Longabaugh both skirt this pattern, though the war chants of Indians set into motion both of their deaths.Interestingly, it’s Brendan Gleeson in the ultimate story who mentions distracting his quarry with a song while he ferries them to the afterlife. He sings “Streets of Laredo” as the carriage transports its passengers to an ethereally twilight hotel.Just an observation. via /r/movies http://bit.ly/2GEkQnb