Movie Review - The Big Lebowski
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1998 / 116 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
Now this is the sort of Coen Brothers movie that made me fall in love with them in the first place. If you want your movies to be straightforward efforts whose conclusions you can see coming a mile away, then you want to shy away from this film. But if you crave the unpredictable, the wild, the downright insane, then this film is going to be your cup of tea.
It’s a story about the Dude, or Jeff Lebowski, as his family named him. The Dude, played to perfection(yes, perfection, there is not a sour note anywhere in his performance) by Jeff Bridges, is a stoner. He is also one of the laziest men on Earth. The Narrator tells us so right at the beginning of the movie, but it would not take us long to figure this out, even if he didn’t. I think it is a perfect introduction to this character that the first time we see him, he is drinking a carton of milk without paying for it, then writing a check for sixty-nine cents.
Anyway, The Dude comes home from shopping to find two men waiting for him. The men dunk his head in the toilet and then piss upon his rug. They then discover that he is not the man they wanted and leave him alone to seek out the other Jeff Lebowski, a millionaire with a young trophy wife who owes money to pornographers.
The Dude is nonplussed, however. You see, the rug that was urinated upon really “tied the room together” and now he is without it. At the urging of his friend Walter (a man who was in Vietnam and refuses to let anyone forget it) he confronts the millionaire Lebowski and asks to be compensated for his soiled rug.
This all leads him to be involved in a complex plot of deceit, kidnapping, pornography and money that the Dude is not quite equipped to handle. One of the many delights in this film is the fact that The Dude is involved in a scheme that a Humphrey Bogart character would have been aces at solving but which he is mentally ill-suited for. He basically stumbles upon important information, finding the culprits more by accident than through any kind of keen observational know-how.
The plot, which may seem pretty meandering on first glance, is actually pretty clever. It goes forward the whole way and is pretty straightforward. Yet, since we see it through the Dude’s dazed and easily-distracted eyes, the film takes a roundabout way with things. If you’re like me, you will find this approach refreshing. The scheme does not lay itself out plainly for you, but neither does Life most of the time.
Another great source of glee: the characters. Jeff Bridges gives a great, multi-layered yet deceptively lazy performance as the main character and John Goodman is wonderful as the always-agitated Walter. The other performers are equally good, but if I started naming each of them, this review would run on even longer than it already will, so I will allow you the joy of discovering them for yourself.
The dialogue is perfectly-suited for each of these men, revealing little touches and subtle ways of recycling the dialogue which came before. I loved the way the Dude uses about every phrase he hears for himself at a later moment. Very realistic. I loved the ways Walter related everything, in its own way, to his experience in Vietnam. Coen Brothers dialogue is always very lyrical. It abides by its own unique rhythms and spins. I love it every time I hear it. It is so far removed from the speech of any other film.
I also love their bizarre little visual flourishes. Jeff’s drug (crutch) of choice provides them with many opportunities to showcase their visual polish and stage several dream sequences and musical numbers that are truly memorable.
I love this movie. I only liked it at first, but every time you see it, another little marvel presents itself. To me, that is the mark of a great comedy. If you see it once and laugh but never see it again, then it is all right. But if you find some new treasure each time you pop it in, well, to me that means it is destined to be a classic.
In my opinion, “The Big Lebowski” is on its way to classic status….even if it meanders for a while before it eventually gets there.
