director
Joel Coen
screenwriters
Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
producer
Ethan Coen
cinematographer
Roger Deakins
music
Carter Burwell
editors
"Roderick Jaynes" (the Coens)
Tricia Cooke
cast
Jeff Bridges (Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski)
John Goodman (Walter Sobchak)
Julianne Moore (Maude Lebowski)
Steve Buscemi (Donny)
David Huddleston (Mr. Jeffrey Lebowski)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Brandt)
Tara Reid (Bunny Lebowski)
Peter Stormare (Nihilist)
Flea (Nihilist)
Jack Kehler (Dude's Landlord)
John Turturro (Jesus Quintana)
David Thewlis (Knox Harrington)
Sam Elliott (The Stranger)
Ben Gazzara (Jackie Treehorn)
Jon Polito (Da Fino)
Aimee Mann (Nihilist Woman)
Asia Carrera (Girl in "Logjammin'')
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 117m
u.s.
release: March 6, 1998
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other coen
bros. films
reviewed on this website:
- barton
fink
- blood
simple
- fargo
- the
hudsucker proxy
- intolerable
cruelty
- the
ladykillers
- the
man who wasn't there
- miller's
crossing
- o
brother, where art thou?
- raising
arizona
|
As
much as I enjoyed The Big Lebowski -- and it's probably
the best movie this dead season will have to offer -- I'd hesitate
to recommend it to anyone but die-hard fans of the Coen brothers.
Such willfully bizarre Coen efforts as Barton
Fink and The
Hudsucker Proxy seem designed to split viewers into two
categories: those who get it and those who don't (and the latter
viewers usually don't even show up). The Big Lebowski
isn't a relatively straight movie like their crossover hit Fargo,
which the uninitiated could take as a weirder-than-usual crime
drama. No, the new film finds the Coens firmly back on their
deadpan-wacko Raising
Arizona turf.
Abduction plots have served the Coens well, and here they are
again with ransom notes and inept kidnappers (if there isn't
a film-school thesis on the motif of kidnapping in the Coens'
films, there probably will be). Jeff Bridges, returning to his
shaggy King Kong look, stars as the typical Coen hero:
Jeff Lebowski, a stoner and bowler who prefers to be addressed
as "the Dude." He has the same name as a disabled billionaire
(David Huddleston), which leads to a misunderstanding wherein
two thugs show up at the Dude's hovel, rough him up, and pee
on his rug. The other Lebowski's trophy wife, you see, has been
running up debts all over L.A.; when she's kidnapped, the big
Lebowski hires the Dude as a courier for the ransom.
As if the plot even mattered in most Coen movies. The
Big Lebowski, like the Coens' most underrated film The
Hudsucker Proxy, is an excuse for Joel and Ethan's patented
stylized dialogue ("He's a good doctor, and thorough")
and unapologetic caricatures. Coen veteran John Goodman is one
of the latter, as the Dude's Vietnam-vet bowling buddy Walter,
who takes care of his ex-wife's pooch and refuses to bowl on
Jewish holidays. There's also the big Lebowski's "artist"
daughter Maude (Julianne Moore, trying to out-enunciate Jennifer
Jason Leigh in Hudsucker), who has about as much reason
to be in the film as anyone else -- which is to say, not much
except to set up a gag or say things that nobody outside a Coen
film would say.
The Coens shrewdly cast Jeff Bridges against type. Usually, Bridges
is the most alert of actors; he was ideal as the alien in Starman,
trying Earth customs on for size. The Dude, however, is blissfully
oblivious, and Bridges gives a relaxed slapstick performance.
Sometimes he's funny just sitting there, spread out across the
back seat of a limo, sipping White Russians that always stain
his mustache. But underneath this slacker is a hard-working professional
-- Bridges does more with his deflated body language than many
comedians can manage by chewing the furniture.
Like Bridges, the Coens are pros whose work doesn't look like
work at all -- it looks like goofing off -- until you see Coen
wannabes try it and fall flat on their faces. The Big Lebowski
doesn't really come together; it's as if the Coens consciously
avoided easy, audience-pleasing wrap-ups and character arcs.
(Another motif in the Coens' work is offscreen deaths of major
characters: Judy Davis and John Mahoney in Barton Fink,
the kidnapped wife in Fargo. There's another one here.)
The movie is the Coens' acknowledged tribute to Raymond Chandler
(just as Miller's
Crossing was a nod to Hammett and Blood
Simple their version of James M. Cain), and Chandler
wasn't all that concerned with plot coherence either -- he used
a story as a clothesline on which to hang vivid characters, snappy
patter, and local color. That sums up every Coen film, including
this one. |
