Gillian Welch, David Rawlings - When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings -
Posted on 02/27/2019 4:48:26 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
THE MORTAL REMAINS IS A JOLLY RIDE WITH DEATHA lady (Tyne Daly), a trapper (Chelcie Ross), a Frenchman (Saul Rubenik), an Irishman (Brendan Gleeson), and an Englishman (Jojo O'Neill) share a stagecoach ride together. In between singing songs, the trapper regales the passengers about his life on the frontier and his sexual relations with a Comanche woman. The lady, who is religious and en route to reunite with her preacher husband, is offended by the trapper's life of sin. The Frenchman argues the nature of love with the lady, who has a momentary health scare. The Englishman then tells the story of how he and his Irish friend - they are both bounty hunters - captured their latest quarry, whose body is being transported on the roof of the stagecoach, and what it felt like to watch him die. Finally, they all arrive at their destination and enter the hotel.
The Mortal Remains is the only one of the shorts where no one dies, yet it's very much about death itself. It begins with the lady, the trapper, and the Frenchman arguing human nature. The trapper is convinced people are no different from the ferrets he skins for pelts, the lady sees only sinners and the righteous, and the Frenchman argues that people change and behave according to desire and circumstances. Whether or not any or all of them are correct, the bounty hunters' story argues that death is the inevitable common denominator.
However, it's strongly implied that the trapper, Frenchman, and lady are actually dead; the Irishman's final song "Pills of White Mercury about a man slowly dying of syphilis, and the Englishman said he and the Irishman like to think of themselves as "reapers... harvesters of souls" and not bounty hunters. The Englishman's story of the Midnight Caller is a treatise about how humans try to process the moment of their death, so the passengers are being driven to their final destination - the hotel at Fort Morgan - by their spectral coachman. The Mortal Remains slowly reveals itself as a supernatural tale and is a surreal punchline ending to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
I thought the dialog among the passengers was the most fascinating of the entire movie.
Buster Scruggs denier!(/S)
Notice the bounty hunter had the dead body. The 3 other passengers got off the stage coach with no baggage. Indication they left town fast. They hesitated to go into the hotel. They were fugitives apparently who were concerned that the bounty hunter would kill them next.
I found a site called “Screen Rants” that does a good job analyzing the last vignette. I thought it was one of the most fascinating of them all.
Heh! I forgot he was long gone. It's from his site which still exists.
Me, too. I had a lot of tears in my eyes at the end of that. Just thinking about it now brings tears to my eyes. The poor young lass losing her brother and a completely uncertain future, then the kindly wagon train boss bringing new hope to both of them, then the humor of the the girls and the terrier at the prairie dog town, then boom.
See my post #41 about “Mortal Remains.” I saw them getting off in the middle of nowhere with no baggage, then watching the stagecoach leave with what appeared to be their baggage on top. They were all wistfully watching the coach depart with their worldly belongings. I thought “What in the world?” when that happened.
I think John Orquiola explains it very well.
I was obviously not in the mood and got through the girl and the cowboy discussing marriage and her blowing her brains out and I felt that that was enough. It was too dark for me. I love the Coen brothers and everything they’ve done so far, but this one was a great disappointment to me. I can’t speak for the rest of the film since I didn’t watch all of it, but they manipulated the viewer into hoping there was a positive ending and then selected the worst possible outcome. It was warped and that’s being nice.
It was cruel and awful.
We all end up in the same hotel.
I said to my wife that they could have totally saved her and still had a very tense moment. I think a great ending would have been that the dog jumps on her, move the gun and/or take the bullet for her.
Life on the frontier and traveling in wagon trains was fraught with peril. Indian attacks were common. It was very common for people to do exactly what was shown when you were overrun. The wagon train driver explained in fairly polite but firm language what would happen to the young woman if she were captured by the Indians.
It was sorrowful, yes, but realistic and a not unexpected outcome. I would not call that warped.
Yep. You check in and can’t check out. The driver taking you there makes no stops, either.
I watched the whole thing, but I only found the very first story to be funny and really great. The rest was just...meh, and a let down after the opening.
The ending in the movie is exactly as Mr. White wrote it 118 years ago. In fact, when you read it, you'll find that a lot of the dialog in the movie was taken almost verbatim from the short story. The Coen brothers did change quite a few things in the story, but the Indian battle depicted on the screen is faithful to the original story.
If you want to read the story, you can read it at Read “The Girl Who Got Rattled,” the Stewart Edward White Story That Inspired One Chapter of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Deeply depressing. Every major character except the old prospector dies.
bump - true
I liked it....Cohen Bothers films are worth watching
Gillian Welch, David Rawlings - When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings -
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