It’s always so satisfying when certain performances eclipse genre expectations, challenging audiences to reconsider an actor’s range. It’s delightful when a great actor shows up seemingly out of the blue and just nails it. Liam Neeson’s portrayal of the Impresario in the Coen Brothers’ 2018 anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is one of these transformational moments. It’s one of his bleakest performances, stripping away his heroic persona to reveal a cold and calculating survival instinct. Far removed from his revenge-seeking action roles, Neeson mostly stays silent in the story, communicating through gestures and subtle facial expressions rather than dialogue. At least until he sings in a haunting and emotional moment, belting out a rendition of “The Sash my Father Wore,” a Northern Ireland ballad commemorating King William III’s victory.
Liam Neeson Secures His “Meal Ticket”

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Release Date

November 9, 2018

Runtime

133 Minutes

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a Western split into six distinct segments — “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” “Near Algodones,” “Meal Ticket,” “All Gold Canyon,” “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” and “The Mortal Remains.” Each deliver a short story with dark comedy exploring morality, human nature, and harsh realities of the American frontier. The anthology took the brothers 25 years to write, with Ethan Coen telling The LA Times, “…we never thought of any of them as potential features or things that would grow into mature whole beings other than what they were. They were all written as shorts.”
Each vignette takes a different tone, with Neeson setting the mood for “Meal Ticket.” Touring the Rockies in a wagon, the Impresario is the manager of a limbless performer (Melling) who recites literature, including Shelley, Shakespeare, and Lincoln’s address, to frontier audiences. Temperatures drop, audiences start to dwindle, and profits go down. The Impresario gets increasingly desperate, leading him to purchase a chicken who can perform mathematical tricks (“the pecking Pythagoras”). The fate of the performer does not look bright.

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The entire thing is a dark commentary on art and commerce, and the increasingly butchered body of the so-called “high arts.” As culture devolves one limb at a time in “Meal Ticket,” highbrow literature is no longer valued, with audiences preferring a silly chicken trick. The artist is (in this case, quite literally) cast aside.
Neeson Has Sung in Films Before ‘Buster Scruggs’

“Meal Ticket” is a study of relationships. Neeson plays his cold and melancholic role authentically, almost like a cruel and even quieter version of his character in The Grey. His performance is a study of restrained emotional brutality, and his movements communicate the characters’ desperate economic survival instincts. When he ultimately replaces the performer with poultry, the Impresario shows how necessity can strip away humanity. The fact that a beautiful song is inserted within this bleak narrative is almost morbidly funny in its seeming incongruity.
It’s not the first time we’ve heard Neeson sing, though. In 1986’s Duet for One, he had the stressful task of flexing his vocals in front of musical royalty, Julie Andrews. Neeson’s character Trotter sings “Green Green Grass of Home” for Stephanie Anderson (Andrews), a famous violin player whose gift is slipping away. Neeson told The Guardian, “I’ve never been more nervous in all my life.” There are no nerves on show in “Meal Ticket,” though, as the drunken Impresario sings his passionate rendition of “The Sash” around the fire as the performer looks on, startled.

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When Art Becomes the Survival of the Fittest

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“Meal Ticket” is nearly 20 minutes of beautifully filmed, unnerving brilliance. Yes, the Impresario looks after the performer, but not for love (at least not anymore); it’s for his gain. Is he pure evil? Did he cut off the artist’s limbs? Or is he just void of sentimentality, with survival diminishing any valid human connection he may or may not have had? As Never Felt Better stated: “The inherent grimness of the narrative can’t cloud what is being portrayed and while “Meal Ticket” will certainly not be to everyone’s taste, it is the kind of thing I would hold up as a stellar example of the actor’s craft.”
The scenery in “Meal Ticket” is blessed with sumptuous emerald shades, and the snowy forest and mountain views are breathtakingly beautiful, much like Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015’s The Revenant. But it still can’t sugarcoat the ​​​stark, disturbing narrative of the short story. ​​​​To be replaced by a chicken is rubbing salt into the performer’s wounds. As a whole, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs asks: do any of our actions (especially the creative ones) change the grand scheme of things and how meaningful life is? Big questions from big directors and a big actor (with a big voice), Liam Neeson. You can watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs through the link below:
Watch on Netflix