broad sense of the “old West”, there is a strong thematic throughline. The film continuously revisits the topic of death both with humor and with deep sadness. The Coen Brothers remind us not just of the certainty of death, but of the uncertainty of it. Just as viewers may find themselves shocked and saddened by the demise of one character, they may be equally surprised at the survival of another.

Throughout the film characters must cope with death both in terms of their own lives and the lives of those around them. Some are admirable while others seemingly deserve their fate. The titular Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) is a wanted man who murders with no regard for the sanctity of life. Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) is an innocentgirl coping with the death of her brother and discovering young love for the first time when she is confronted by a warring group of Native Americans. This theme is tied together nicely in the final sequence which features a group of five strangers in a stagecoach. At first seeming to call back to the classic John Ford western Stagecoach, the exchange between the group quickly evolves into a surrealistic fantasy which more closely resembles Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage. The whole sequence has the strange feeling that we may be seeing our characters escorted to the afterlife as the film offers no firm reason that their coexistence in the stagecoach makes any sense. Though no supernatural element is confirmed, the feeling is certainly there and those familiar