movies
BY RICK LEVIN
The Dude Abides
Another look at Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski
A
s an archetypal resident of L.A.’s
shadier streets, the Dude abides, a
latter-day California Buddha in the
Holy Temple of Slackerdom, plum mystic and
stoned immaculate, a knocker of pins, drinker
of Caucasians. “He’s the man for his time and
place,” says the man in the cowboy hat, his
purple baritone of a voice rumbling like warm
milk in your stomach. “He fi ts right in there.”
That’s the Dude: an icon of that other, less
epochal apocalypse, where the bastard 20th
century simply whirled around and collapsed
like pins in a bowling alley, barely noticed and
then swept away for a brand-new set.
So I’ll come clean and reveal myself to
be the monkeyfucker I am (no, I don’t need
to cuss so much, fuck you): Like any Coen
Brothers’ movie, I saw The Big Lebowski
when it debuted in 1998, and I haven’t seen
it in its entirety since. It’s always struck
me as one of the Coens’ minor efforts, a
loose-limbed, bedazzled curiosity that sits
like packing material between indubitable
masterworks like Blood Simple, Miller’s
Crossing and Fargo. And then, by the
time I came to understand that Lebowski
had taken permanent residence among the
pomo cultural detritus of my generation —
becoming perhaps the most quotable cult
fi lm of the last 30 years — it seemed too
late to pretend I’d always been hip to the
Dude’s driftwood antics.
If, however, there’s anything I’ve
learned about Coen Brother fi lms, it’s that
they not only reward a second look but also,
by some inscrutable intrinsic dynamic,
seem to demand it. Like the initial pass
of opium through a blighted liver, a Coen
movie cannot be processed the fi rst time
around; only upon the second (and third,
fourth, fi fth) viewing does their full genius
begin to reveal itself. Nowhere is this more
borne out than in No Country for Old Men,
their Oscar-winning adaptation of Cormac
McCarthy’s vicious, gothic crime novel.
The fi rst time I saw the movie, it actually
bored me; but then, when I gave it a second
chance — and knowing every suspenseful
twist and explosive outcome — I was
mesmerized.
There is a moment in The Big Lebowski
when the Dude (Jeff Bridges), realizing
he’s being followed in his car, attempts
a fantastic feat of California-style multi-
tasking: With his eyes glued to the rear view
mirror to watch the progress of his pursuer,
he somehow manages simultaneously
to steer, drink a brewski and polish off a
tiny smoldering roach. Almost. Taking one
fi nal tug on the joint, it drops burning into
his lap, whereupon the Dude — screaming
like a girl — upends the bottle, pouring
beer into his crotch to extinguish the fi re.
Doing a good 15 miles per hour, the Dude
loses control and crashes into a dumpster,
whereupon his car does a single endo about
a foot into the air. I started laughing so hard
I had to stop the movie.
Wrapped, very loosely, around a weak,
4 /2 6
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relatively negligible crime-noir plot that
is part Raymond Chandler and part acid
fl ashback, The Big Lebowski is a tour
de force of deadpan comedy fobbed off
as a buddy action fl ick, and as such,
the movie could never be considered a
something greater than the sum of its parts.
It is exactly in its constituent parts that
Lebowski locates its raison d’être: Bridges,
in one of his fi nest performances, as the
personifi cation of the Eastern principle
of passive suffering, a man jerked (and
jerked around) here and there by forces
he is incapable of comprehending; the
always excellent John Goodman as a
converted Jew Vietnam vet whack job;
John Turturro as the metrosexual Hispanic
bowler Jesus; Steve Buscemi brilliantly
barely registering; a very sexy, very funny
Julianne Moore as a cold, calculating
protofeminist arts freak.
Thanks to the cast’s complete immersion
and faith in the material, combined with
the Coen Bros.’ technical perfectionism (as
well as their seriously underrated sense of
humor), The Big Lebowski goes aces in —
and from a movie about nothing arises, all
shits and giggles, a complete mythology
for our dark, dangerous times.
What more could you ask from a
fi lm that features Aimee Mann playing a
mumbling Nihilist who sacrifi ces her toe
for a briefcase full of John Goodman’s
dirty underwear?
ew
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