Wednesday, March 11, 1998
‘The Big Lebowski’ doubles over in its own humor
FILM: Coen Brothers project attempts appealing to sentiment,
funny bone with hints of absurd
By Tommy Nguyen
Daily Bruin Contributor
The pop success of "Fargo" has made "The Big Lebowski" one of
the most anticipated movies of the year, and for Coen-heads
everywhere anticipation was something we all had to endure: the
delayed release date and titillating genius of the teaser trailer
have been blue-balling us for months now.
Well, the movie’s here, and somehow that’s just about all one
can say about it: it’s here. Much like the film’s unlikely hero – a
slovenly doobie brother named "the Dude" – "The Big Lebowski," no
matter how amiably amusing its presence is, merely takes up couch
space when everything’s been cashed. Toward the end you just want
to slap the meandering nonsense out of the movie and say, "Dude,
will you quit jerking off and finish your story?!"
Then again, it’s hard to slap a harmless stoner who just wants
to entertain, and that’s why "The Big Lebowski" also has a certain
slacker charm that nudges us in the rib, even when we’re not
laughing. Despite its failures (primarily, that the laughs run
out), the movie is no blot on the Coen Brothers’ resume, and so far
there’s only been one (the frigidly plastic "Hudsucker Proxy").
But what’s so admirable about the Coen Brothers in their latest
project is their willingness to put up their dukes a bit to
challenge that constant knock against them: that they give us a
bunch of stylistic eye candy to hide the fact that they only have
lumps of coal for our hearts. Yes, "Lebowski" doesn’t seem to be
another circus show for the Coen Brothers’ high-wire camera and
lighting acrobatics (like the ones, breathtaking as they are, in
"Blood Simple"). More impressively, there doesn’t seem to be a mean
bone anywhere in "Lebowski," and there’s a sweetness to its much
ado that makes it the friendliest Coen Brothers film all
around.
Surely the fuzzy-wuzzy feel we get from "Lebowski" is because of
the Dude (a truly funk-ified Jeff Bridges), a stoned and de-boned
heap of a human being, "quite possibly the laziest man in L.A.,"
who walks around the supermarket in his bathrobe and likes to spend
his time in the gutter lanes with his bowling buddies, Walter (an
almost too-generous John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Buscemi).
Strangely, American audiences tend to love characters who, no
matter how special they are, embrace or strive for averageness
("Good Will Hunting," "Forrest Gump"), and likewise the Dude offers
the same comfort: He’s a happy martyr for mediocrity who will
continue "to take it easy for all of us sinners."
The Dude has a hard time taking it easy when a duo of thugs
break into his Venice apartment, dunk his head in his toilet and
urinate on his rug. The men think the Dude is Jeff Lebowski, whose
wife apparently owes them money in some porno-sordid way. By birth
(only by birth), the Dude’s name is Jeff Lebowski, but they’ve got
the wrong dude: the Jeff Lebowski they want is a Pasadena
millionaire.
Well, by the Dude’s logical estimation, the big Lebowski owes
him a rug, and so he ventures to confront his grossly refracted
doppelganger. Eventually, the big Lebowski offers him more than
that; someone has kidnapped his beach-blanket-bimbo wife (and a
kidnapping is always a bong-water fresh idea for the Coen
Brothers), and he’ll pay the Dude handsomely to play ball with her
ransomers.
No sweat, thinks the Dude, that is until his sweaty bowling chum
Walter – a doughboy-lovable NRA mascot who relates everything to
‘Nam – becomes his bumbling cohort. When Walter’s plot to finagle
the ransom money goes awry, the Dude becomes the target of an
onslaught of typically absurd Coen-stituents, which include a
Sprockets revival of terrorizing German nihilists (Flea of "Red Hot
Chili Peppers" makes an appearance as one of them) and Lebowski’s
plotting daughter Maud (Julianne Moore in staccato flare), who
literally flies into the movie as a bat out of feminist hell, an
artist whose paintings have been described as "extremely
vaginal."
With the lowbrow tandem of the Dude and Walter cooking up most
of the mayhem in "Lebowski," the Coen Brothers are once again
serving up hot dogs and potato salad as comic manna: on the movie
screen the Coens have become the prized fiduciaries of
smaller-than-life Americans, and their familiar type of
trailer-park humanity is constantly present in the Dude’s struggle
to reclaim his small, unobtrusive corner of the cosmos. And this
movie comes at the heels of "Fargo" – the most hearty slice of
Middle America the Coens have dished out so far – and yet be aware
that "Lebowski" shares just about nothing with "Fargo", whose
restrained, deadpan, "based on a true story" (it’s not) attitude
makes it a Coen Brothers anomaly altogether.
In "Lebowski," the filmmakers are somewhat back to their
signature fantasia of mythico-poetic screwballing, the kind first
introduced in "Raising Arizona" and mercilessly hammered in "Barton
Fink." We see a drugged-out Busby Berkeley dance number – where the
Dude flies through the city’s skyline with an inane Lois Lane look
on his face – along with other scenes so flamboyantly wacky (such
as a marmot being used as an attack dog by the nihilists) that,
even though the Coens have put a leash on their spastic camera,
their relentless cerebral slapstick becomes a source of overkill
anyway.
What’s even worse, it’s overkill in a story that almost has no
life to kill. The whole scheme with the kidnapping is so dull that
it’s exhausting just knowing that the movie’s about a kidnapping
and, judging from the film’s half-assed resolution, the filmmakers
were probably just as bored with it as we are. And unlike the rest
of the Coen Brothers’ films, there is such an utter lack of
geographical specificity – essential to the comedy of both "Fargo"
and "Raising Arizona" are the daffy idiosyncrasies of their
respective tribes. "Lebowski’s" voice-over intro (narrated by Sam
Elliot, the low-rent John Wayne of our generation) goes into this
whole hoopla about what kind of city Los Angeles is, and yet the
Coen Brothers do nothing with Los Angeles; the story could have
taken place in any part of the country, and no one would be the
wiser.
Except of course, the Coen Brothers, who are wise to just about
everything there is in the world. But at their worst, it’s entirely
their world: what we feel in "The Big Lebowski" is a couple of
gifted filmmakers mostly getting high off their own hyperbolic
ingenuities, and then once in a while, one of the brothers will
quit his horseplaying and say, almost regrettably, "Oh look, we’ve
got company." No doubt most of us would love to be in their company
anyway, no matter what private stash of crack they’re smoking.
Still, an important thing for the Coen Brothers to know about their
audiences is that a contact high doesn’t last very long.