Director: Joel Coen
Screenplay: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston, John Turturro, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Running Time: 117 minutes
Genre: Comedy
Los Angeles, 1991: Jeff Lebowski (Bridges), who prefers to be known as "The Dude", is a good natured slacker, an ex-hippie who spends his time bowling and smoking weed. One night two strangers break into his small apartment, mistaking him for a millionaire who is also named Jeff Lewbowki (Huddleston). They leave after realising their mistake, but not before one of them ruins the Dude's rug. Believing that the "Big Lebowski" owes him for his rug, the Dude finds himself unwitting drawn into a complex kidnapping plot involving an experimental artist, German nihilists, wealthy pornographers, a million dollars and a hungry marmot.
This is a very funny shaggy-dog story from the Coen Brothers. Influenced by the detective fiction of author Raymond Chandler, the story doesn't really make a lot of sense, but then, it's not supposed to. the episodic narrative is packed with jokes and memorable characters: Aggressive Vietnam veteran Walter (John Goodman), avant-garde artist Maude (Julianne Moore) who works naked flying on a swing, and flamboyant bowler Jesus (John Turturro). The Coen Brothers have a real gift for idiosyncratic dialogue, and a strong ear for individual speech patterns. It's sylishly directed, and visually striking, particularly the surreal dream sequences, and a great soundtrack of late sixties and seventies psychedelic rock. Most importantly it is very funny, and full of quotable lines. The film wasn't a big success on it's first release, but it has since become a major cult hit, to the point where some people pattern their lives on the film, there is even a semi-religion known as "Dudeism". It's set against the backdrop of the first Gulf War, which is seen on TV sets and occasionally mentioned (in one scene the Dude hallucinates Saddam Hussein as a bowling alley employee) but doesn't really impact the characters lives at all, even the militaristic Walter is pretty much fixated on Vietnam, and these characters are living in the past, and are still stuck in the early seventies. Their nostalgic worldview isn't criticised by the film, seeming to exist apart from the rest of the world, in a mythic Shangri-La for white middle-aged men, of bowling and weed. The Dude's problems occur when he is forces himself out of his own world, but despite everything that happens, all he really wants is a rug. Everything the Dude does in the film is because he has been pushed to do it, or talked into it by others, to the extent that he frequently parrots what people say to him to others, word for word, as if they are his own ideas, and he seems to think they are. The Dude elevates laziness into an artform. Everyone in the talented cast gives a good performance, and it seems like it was a lot of fun for all concerned. While the Coes Brothers have definitively stated that there will not be a sequel, John Tuturro has written, directed and stars in a spin-off film called The Jesus Rolls which is due for release in 2020.
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