Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Big Lebowski - 1998 - The Coen Brothers



The Big Lebowski is my other favorite film of all time and is a film that I love more each time that I see. In fact I am not recommending that you see it once, I recommend that you see it at least 3 times as it is a film that you grow to love more and more each time that you see it.

The plot follows Jeff Lebowski aka The Dude (Jeff Bridges) a pot smoking bowling slacker who is mistaken for a millionaire by two thugs who pee on his cherished rug. When The Dude tries to get his rug replaced by the millionaire Lebowski he is thrown in the middle of a kidnapping investigation.

Things get worse for the easy going dude when he enlists the help of his bowling teammate Walter (John Goodman), a Jew(ish) Vietnam vet with a short fuse and terrible ideas. The two friends, along with their confused friend Donny (Steve Buscemi) try to figure out how to get out of the confusing web that The Dude is stuck in.

The relationship between these 3 characters is brilliant as there always seems to be two conversations happening at the same time, one between Walter and The Dude and the other between an angry Walter and Donny. The relationship between these 3 have even been described as a metaphor for some of Nietzsche's views. (http://www.imjeee.com/best-big-lebowski-explanation-ive-ever-read/)

The Coen brothers are two of my favorite storytellers today as they are always coming out with great films, all of which are completely different from the others. The Big Lebowski is unlike any film that you will see. It is a film that ties together film noir with a comedy of errors with a lot of F words.

This review is really doing the film no justice as it is one of the funniest films I've ever seen and is likely to be known as one of (if not the) biggest cult films of all time.

1 comment:

  1. It's worth mentioning, on the movies philosophical merits, that though people do a lot of things in this film and the plot seems complicated, by the end, when you think about it, no one has actually done anything, and nothing has been accomplished, or been happening all along, except that Donny has passed on. Donny, who we only find out posthumously, apparently loved surfing.

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