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| The Big Lebowski (1998) |
I mentioned that this kind of story is a familiar narrative but with a key twist. The familiar aspect of the narrative is the crime / detective angle. Someone is kidnapped, there's a ransom, but a bunch of different connected parties are after the same thing, and it's confusing and complicated until it isn't. The mystery presented in this movie is actually a very clever one; it certainly left me guessing. It's presented very nicely and, for the most part, we never feel like the movie is hiding anything from us; at least, nothing that the main character doesn't yet know. You never feel smarter than the 'detective', which can ruin a lot of good detective stories. Likewise, the film never leaves us in the dust. We learn certain things before the 'detective', though we never get too much that it ruins the overall story. It's very well-paced in that regard, even as things get more convoluted as the movie goes on. Once it all ended, it did take me a moment to put ALL the pieces together, but that's a testament to the film not spoonfeeding us all the information in one go. Like I said, it's a clever story.
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| Jeff Bridges as The Dude |
The key twist, however, is that the 'detective' in quotation marks is not a normal detective. He's not even a detective. He's just some guy who gets wrapped up in all of this because some guy peed on his rug. That's the catalyst for this whole story; this guy gets his rug peed on. And it just works. That's the tone of the movie; The Dude is really just stumbling his way through all of this, just trying to get his life back. And yet, everyone around him is treating him like he knows everything, doing what they would normally do to the detective in this story: setting him up, trying to squeeze him for information, drugging him and knocking him out, you get it. Meanwhile, he's just being his regular self; laid-back, carefree, and it's a great comparison. He cares enough about the situation that it still feels earned when he works it out, but he cares for a completely different reason than he normally would in a story like this. I can't stress enough how much I enjoy genre-deconstructions like this, especially when it feels earned.
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| John Goodman as Walter |
The other side of the coin is the glimpse we get of The Dude's regular life and his normal cohort. The scenes in the bowling alley are among my favourite in the entire movie. The dialogue between The Dude, Walter and Donny is immaculate. The dialogue in general is really witty and clever, that's true throughout the entire movie, but the bowling alley scenes in general are wonderful. The rapport between the three of them, the roles they have in their friendship group, the spot-on delivery, the half-assed non-sequiturs, the almost minute long exchange towards the beginning where they just keep saying the same s*** over and over again; it all feels real and natural and I love it. The comedy across the board really lands here, and I have a feeling it'll just improve on a rewatch. It's really diverse in it's style of comedy; they don't just go for one type of joke here. You get the fish-out-of-water Dude in this world of crime, the out-there humour with the friends, the weird-ass dream sequences that somehow work... it's just this really unique combination of familiar tropes that shouldn't work together but somehow do, and that's the best way I can describe the movie as a whole.
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| Steve Buscemi as Donny |
Not to mention the cast is perfect. The Dude was supposedly written for Jeff Bridges, and I can completely see why. It would be very easy to play this role as a one-note bum, but Bridges brings this extra layer to it; you can tell in his performance. He also has pitch perfect chemistry with John Goodman, who is a treasure to this Earth and always has been. I absolutely love John Goodman; he might be one of my favourite actors out there, and he nails Walter. I love how irredeemable he is, he's just the worst person ever, and Goodman brings him to life in a very real way. Steve Buscemi was the comedic highlight for me; he didn't get the most laughs, but he got them the most consistently. Basically every time he piped up, it was perfect. Julianne Moore played a very eccentric character very effectively, Sam Elliott's voice is like silk on the ear canal, David Huddleston is a very imposing individual... just everyone played their roles perfectly. I don't know what else I can say here. Aside from the ending feeling a little rushed and not getting as much closure as I would have liked with all the characters, this was a fantastic movie.
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| Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski |
It's easy to see why The Big Lebowski (1998) became the cult classic that it is today. I'm sure to watch it again. I'm sure to love it again. I definitely think everyone should watch it at least once; it's too unique to miss out on. 9.5/10.
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