comp 1 Essay

The Big Lebowski: A Real Achiever, Urban or Not

The nineties were a strange time, at least in America. We’d awoken from the nightmare that was Reaganomics, and gone from a nation that produced a nation that outsourced. Yuppies were beating back what had begun in the late sixties, flourished in the seventies, and had been all but crushed in the eighties. But in the nineties, the children of people who embraced a largely mainstream counterculture were finally grown enough to start shaping the world around them. It was a renaissance of sorts, and two brothers named Ethan and Joel Coen were among them. They made a few movies during the late eighties that have since achieved cult status such as Blood Simple, Crime Wave, and Raising Arizona. Through the rest of the nineties, they had many established classics such as Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Fargo. But nothing comes close to their absolute masterpiece, The Big Lebowski. Compared to their other works, The Big Lebowski is the most ambitious, a highly stylized walk along the fine line between comedy and deep thought. It begins with the introduction of the (debatably) titular character, Jeff Lebowski, who is for all intents and purposes, a professional bum. In the production notes of the film, he is said by the the brothers Coen to have been a man in whom “casualness runs deep.” Jeff Bridges does this with ease, as if the character is actually a manifestation of himself. Sam Elliott, who plays a narrating cowboy known simply as “The Stranger,” describes him as “quite possibly the laziest (man) in Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the running’ for laziest worldwide,” in a voiceover, as Jeff (who calls himself “The Dude”) writes a check for seventy-nine cents to buy a carton of half-and-half and nothing else. Elliott’s smooth drawl is iconic, known from movies such as the for mentioned movie, Saving Private Ryan, and in video games such as the Call of Duty series. It gives the listener a sense of comfort, like he might sound like God, or any other important figure being capable of belying comfort to those who are listening. The story that follows, however, is anything but comforting to the listeners. Directly following the introduction, The Dude arrives home to a rather unpleasant scene. A man grabs him by his hair and runs him into the bathroom, driving his head into the toilet, demanding to know where “the money” is. Off-screen until now, a large Asian man unzips his trousers, and begins to urinate on the rug in his living room, The Dude’s pride and joy of his home unbeknownst to the Asian, as he bellows, “Ever thus to deadbeats, Lebowski.” Quick to retort, The Dude tells him, “At least I’m housebroken.” He collects himself, and explains to the henchmen how they’ve obviously made a mistake, because the person they are looking for is supposedly a very rich married man, and The Dude lives in digs that are more bachelor-appropriate. Dejected, they realize their mistake and exit. At this point, the movie breaks and the focus is finally honed in on. His mission is tracking down the person who the would-be burglars intended to find a replacement for his rug. His rug “really tied the room together” and though The Dude lives a simple life, this was a bright spot for him. He’d done nothing wrong, but was punished due to the transgressions of people he didn’t even know. This point is also where The Dude’s two best friends, Walter and Donny (played by John Goodman and Steve Buscemi, respectively) are introduced. This is where the movie’s real charm shows through. For all its action, this movie is really about dialogue, the conversations that we find mundane when we’re participating in them, but endlessly fascinating when observing them. Most would dismiss this as minutia, a celebration of hubris, but because this film takes the time to look for more where most would assume there’s less (like a bowling alley), it comes off as

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