The Big Lebowski is 25, and Actually Great

• Year Released: 1998

• Runtime: 117 Minutes

• Directed: Joel Coen (Ethan Coen Uncredited)

• Produced: Joel and Ethan Coen, John Cameron

• Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston

• Oscars:

  • Won: None.

  • Nominated: None. But what do they know?

• IMDb Plot Summary: Ultimate L.A. slacker Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for a rug ruined by debt collectors, enlisting his bowling buddies for help while trying to find the millionaire’s missing wife.

A Man for His Time. I’m gonna spend some time attempting to convince you that this film, which is downright hilarious and perhaps *the* cult film might also just be a work of genius. Beneath this film’s quotable dialogue, ridiculous scenarios, ludicrously silly dream sequences, slapstick, and laid-back (though certainly not nihilistic) silly attitude lies a deep complexity of ideas and perspective about 20th Century America ending and is a brilliant cross-section of society and culture. But, if your jam is to just throw this thing on, perhaps in an altered state of mind, and laugh your heart out, it's also as good as they come. The miracle of this movie, to me, is that it’s both and that the potpourri of Americana and philosophy is made better by the fact that it’s delivered in this form.

When the film opens, it’s almost as if we’re in an episode of some charming mid-century Western serial like Sugarfoot, complete with a rambling and wandering cowboy (Sam Elliott) who narrates our story and even interacts with the Dude once or twice. If he’s a product of the pre-Vietnam 50’s and 60’s, then The Dude and Walter are dueling products of the Vietnam era. The Dude is an anti-establishment hippie type who loves Creedence Clearwater Revival but hates The Eagles, and Walter is an aggressive, semi-paranoid veteran who blames Vietnam for all his problems yet brings up his service there at every opportunity, and I mean every opportunity. These two best friends have a similar moral compass and similar outlook on life, and share a love of bowling, yet are styled and approach problems in about as opposite a fashion as you could find. David Huddleston’s Jeff Lebowski (flanked by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brilliant turn as lackey Brandt) represents a Reaganism that is aghast at the Dude’s commitment to his nonchalant ways and touts his self-made wealth; the fact that he lives off an allowance is a clever wrinkle in this symbolism that gives his life outlook enough distance to make it yet another ingredient in the soup of ideas that the Coens are stirring up in this story.

Along with these reflections of different era-based attitudes and cultural accessories, we’re treated to a host of competing philosophies that our cowboy narrator suggests flourish at their most eccentric in Los Angeles but are a part of the universal “comedy of life” along with life’s cycle of birth, life, and death. The ultimate antagonists of the film are revealed to be nihilists who “don’t believe in anything” without seeing the irony in the fact that that’s what they believe in. Donny, perhaps the most normal guy in the movie is a pacifist and is constantly being told to shut up by Walter and is also the film’s only fatality. Julianne Moore’s Maude Lebowski is a highly intellectual feminist who at once has the world figured out and is also among the strangest and most detached people in the film. Of course, the Dude’s philosophy of “rolling with the punches” reigns supreme here. The Coens stuffed, perhaps in excess, this silly film full of conflicting ideas for the Dude to stumble through while trying to solve the mystery at the heart of the story, but that’s intentional. The Dude would say that the only natural thing for someone to do when confronted with the overwhelming volume of “isms” that have developed in America in the second half of the 20th Century, is to just lay back, not engage, and to do what you love, which in his case is bowling.

A Riff on Noir. When this film was released in 1998, Robert Altman’s 1973 masterpiece The Long Goodbye turned 25, and the two films have some striking similarities in how they approach their genres. Despite being a stoner comedy, The Big Lebowski is also definitely a film noir that derives plenty of laughs in the way it lampoons noir’s hallmarks; Goodbye is much the same. Both films are plotted like a classic film noir complete with a thickening plot, a distant and often unhelpful police force, a protagonist who racks up enemies throughout the runtime, and an unexpected resolution to match the nature of the story never being what it seems. The Long Goodbye’s Philip Marlowe is a man out of time, who has the physical trappings of a 1940’s Marlowe yet is completely of the moment and is nonjudgmental towards the free-spirited hippies who surround him. Similarly, the Dude is a man out of time, but perhaps that makes him the man for his times. His car, styling, outlook, and music choice mark him as a man distinctly not of 1998. This allows for him to not just be a lens with which to view the film’s present societal moment, but it also makes for terrific fish-out-of-water comedy as he interacts with a host of characters who are more eccentric than the last. The case at hand, a convoluted soup involving a purported kidnapping, multiple briefcases purportedly filled with money, pornography, stolen cars, and a femme fatale with key insights into the plot. What makes this film hilarious is just how whacky these elements are, and how the usual menacing atmosphere is defused by the Dude’s inability to be rattled. In short, this film isn’t made funny by some ironic self-awareness, but rather an enthusiastic awareness, and love for, the genre that it’s lampooning. For what it's worth, the Coens have claimed the writings of Raymond Chandler, who wrote the original novel The Long Goodbye as well as many other noir staples, as an inspiration for their work, so my idea isn't all that original. However, this is one case where their claim is completely founded.

In the Coen’s Element. The Dude being such an oddball in a sea of odder-balls in a story that hews closely to the bone of a timeless genre makes him right at home with other Coen protagonists, and this film a snug fit in their filmography. At first blush, that might not feel true of the filmmakers who brought us No Country for Old Men, Blood Simple, Fargo, or True Grit but those stories are chock full of eccentric characters populating the margins of the frame and a brand of humor all their own to complement their contemplation of the depths of human evil. Lebowski is far softer in its treatment of that lattermost idea but the ultimate reveal of Jeff Lebowski’s true nature and the fate that meets Donnie, one of the film’s few truly innocent characters, suggests that even at their lightest, the Coens still have the unfair and cruel nature of life on their mind. This film, in its bizarrely hilarious surrealist glory, sits closer to O Brother Where Art Thou, Hail Caesar!, Raising Arizona, and about half of Fargo in their filmography than it does to their more immediately intense works, but all of these films contain ideas and reflections on society. Lebowski, Brother, and Caesar all feature an ensemble of weirdo characters, each carefully considered in what they represent, that work to hinder or help our protagonist as they seek a redemptive reunion with their spouse, to atone for their guilt, or perhaps just the rug that ties the room together.