"The Big Lebowski" (USA, 1998) a film review by James Kendrick
director: Joel Coen screenwriters: Joel and Ethan Coen stars: Jeff Bridges (The Dude), John Goodman (Walter Sobchak), Julianne Moore (Maude Lebowski), Steve Buscemi (Donny), David Huddleston (The Big Lebowski), John Turturro (Jesus Quintana), Peter Stormare (Nihilist), Sam Elliott (The Stranger), Ben Gazzara (Jackie Treehorn), Tara Reid (Bunny Lebowski) MPAA rating: R review: ***1/2 (out of ****)
Since their film debut in 1984 with the tightly wrought Texas thriller "Blood Simple," Joel and Ethan Coen have been one of the most eclectic, original, and downright fascinating creative teams in modern Hollywood. Their films are highly stylized, deeply embedded in a particular time and place, and their characters are more often than not everyday people who get caught up in highly unusual circumstances.
In "The Big Lebowski," their first cinematic offering since the multiple Academy Award-winning "Fargo," the action takes place in Los Angeles during the Gulf War, and the hero of the story is Jeff Lebowski, aka The Dude. The Dude is played by Jeff Bridges -- one of Hollywood's most underrated actors -- in the best stoned performance since Sean Penn stumbled through the halls of Ridgemont High.
The Dude is a simple man who has never quite made it out of the sixties. He has shaggy, shoulder-length hair, a grizzled goatee badly in need of a trim, and he wears mostly stained tee-shirts, long shorts, and gellies without socks. He smokes a lot of pot, drinks a lot of White Russians, and is more than content to spend the majority of his time bowling with his two buddies, a slightly psychotic Vietnam vet named Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Buscemi), one of those guys who always wants to be part of the conversation, but never quite makes it in.
One day, the Dude is confused with another Jeff Lebowski (David Huddleston), this one being a millionaire philanthropist whose trophy wife, Bunny (Tara Reid), owes a lot of people a lot of money. The main plot and all its accompanying side-plots and Coenesque diatribes are far too complicated to get into here. Suffice to say that The Dude becomes deeply involved with the Big Lebowski when Bunny is kidnaped and The Dude is asked to be a courier for the ransom money. By the time all is said and done, Walter has become deeply involved, as has The Big Lebowski's daughter, Maude (Julianne Moore), a feminist performance artist, a pornographer named Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), and a group of German nihilists led by Peter Stormare, who was so great as the silent but deadly kidnaper in "Fargo."
"The Big Lebowski" plays like an amalgam of all the Coen Brothers' earlier efforts. It shares their previous films' strong sense of time and place, as well as their send-ups of movie genres and political and cultural ideologies. "Lebowski" has the same kind of crazed caricatures that made "Raising Arizona" such a hoot; it has surrealistic dream sequences (one of which involves a Busby Berkley-like dance number) that characterized the ending of "Barton Fink"; and it has the same kind of cartoonish look and feel that pervaded "The Hudsucker Proxy."
The film was shot by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has worked with the Coens on three other films, "Barton Fink," "The Hudsucker Proxy," and "Fargo." Deakins always gives the Coens' films a distinctive visual style, and here he does a brilliant job of capturing the bright colors of seedy Los Angeles in the early nineties, whether that by the obnoxious blue bowling suit worn by The Dude's main competitor Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), or the strikingly manic dream sequences, one of which involves the dizzy spectacle of watching a strike from a bowling ball's point of view.
If "Fargo" was the Coen Brothers' most restrained effort in years, "The Big Lebowski" marks their return to over-the-edge filmmaking. It is overflowing with style and attitude, which helps make up for the scattered plot fragments that never quite come together in the end. The Coens fill the screen with lighting, set design, music, and hilarious performances from all the leads, especially Bridges and the always reliable John Goodman, who shows real comic timing in his untimely 'Nam-inspired outbursts and his intense dedication to his adopted Judaism.
With Joel directing, Ethan producing, and both writing, the Coen Brothers seem limitless in their capacity to turn our world inside out. Their talent lies not in their ability to reflect the norms of reality, but in their potential to dig out the darkest corners of life and bring them to light. The Coens rejoice in the oddballs of the world, and they put them center-stage to show that it's not just guys like The Dude who are nuts, but the entire planet.
©1998 James Kendrick
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