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The Dude Abides
By Corvus | July 24, 2008
I’ll get back to the dialog challenge tomorrow, but I saw The Big Lebowski on the big screen again last night and I thought I’d take the opportunity to write down a few of the things I’ve been saying out loud about the movie for some time now.
Unlike when I saw Julie Taymor’s stunning Titus a few months back, the theater was quite full of young and old alike. I was surprised when, by show of hands, it was revealed that about 50% of the audience had never seen it before. These were young proto-hipster kids comparing music on their video iPods before the show began. Some wore bowling shirts, others had decidedly hobo-chic attire and carefully neglected haircuts. It dawned on me that The Big Lebowski is one of the cornerstones of hipster culture, even though a vast majority of these kids were mostly unaware of the contents of the film. I almost wondered if their parents, or a teacher, hadn’t sent them so they could explore their history a bit. It was, by and large, a fun audience to watch the movie with. Lots of laughter and very little chatter. I even managed to relax enough that I didn’t confiscate cell phones that shown in my eyes while their owners frantically responded to text messages about post-movie plans. Also, there was a trailer for the next Coen Brothers’ movie, Burn After Reading, which I’d somehow missed. So… bonus!
The Big Lebowski is one of my three favorite Coen Brother’s films, alongside O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Hudsucker Proxy. Although I also appreciate their darker films, it is these whimsical tales with folkloric plot arcs that most capture my imagination. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is clearly the adaptation of the Odyssey that the brothers have said it is. The Hudsucker Proxy is a modern fairy tale, with its clear theme of good vs. evil and its wide eyed bumbling hero, excellently played by Tim Robbins (Gooooo, Muncie!). But I feel that the The Big Lewbowski surpasses both of these films in its interpretation of traditional storytelling.
There was a lot about the Dude that didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
I am amused to see the number of user submitted reviews of The Dude’s adventures, both positive and negative, that point to a lack of plot. “Forget the story, enjoy the ride,” seems to be a common theme among the movie’s supporters on Amazon. The movies’ detractors, on the other hand, find themselves asking what the big deal about this nonsensical mess of a movie is. I have to confess that I find myself wondering if they were all watching a completely different movie. Not only does the plot owe a lot to Raymond Chandler, with its hapless central character and its betrayals and reversals, but it doesn’t take a lot of work to find Joseph Campbell’s monomyth threaded throughout The Dude’s journey as well.
Sometimes there’s a man. I won’t say a hero, ’cause what’s a hero?
The Hero’s journey is typically a transformative one and, like the Tarot’s major arcana, begins with the single step of a Fool. But what makes The Dude unique among those who walk the Hero’s Journey is that he absolutely refuses to grow or change throughout the process. From the moment he receives the call to adventure, the Dude struggles to remain exactly as he was before the movie began. The Stranger refers to the Dude as lazy, but I disagree with this assessment. The Dude is a constant and that’s not an easy thing to be. He works very hard to maintain his laissez faire approach to life. Only when facing death does he relent and allow allow that he is indeed, “Mr. Lebowski.” It isn’t long, however, before he’s back to his usual equilibrium, referring himself in the third person as, “the Dude.”
It should be made clear it’s not that the Dude doesn’t have the capacity for change or growth. It’s that he sees no need for it. The purist state of being in Taoist philosophy is Pu, the uncarved block. At the beginning of the Dude’s journey the Stranger, played by Sam Elliott, says, “Sometimes you eat the bear. Sometimes the bear, well, he eats you.” The Dude asks, “That some kind of eastern thing?” The Stranger replies, “Far from it.” This discontinuity–the Dude’s decidedly eastern understanding of a most certainly western sequence of events–pervades the movie. It is, perhaps, responsible for people not following the plot. After all, if the Dude accepts everything that happens around him as part of the tapestry of experience, why should the audience probe any deeper?
Well, I lost my train of thought here. But–aw hell, I done introduced him enough.
I could likely spend years writing exhaustively about The Big Lebowski with respect to mythic and folkloric plot structures. The Dude’s closest friends and bowling buddies–the volatile Walter Sobchak and the passive Donny Kerabatsos–each deserve hundreds of pages. But the Hero’s Journey is considered by some to be a tool of the tyrannical patriarchy. It is a formula that seeks to reduce a (decidedly masculine) life path to a common sequence of external performance measures. And the Dude isn’t exactly the sort of person who believes in external judgments and societal measures. He’s no hero. He’s no sacred warrior on a righteous path. He’s the Dude and well, you know, the Dude abides. I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that.
Tagged:big-lebowski, hero's journey, storytelling. |
July 24th, 2008 at 11:18 am
This movie is why i never fuck a stranger in the ass. man i wish i had gone to see it, despite the proto-hipster kids
July 25th, 2008 at 4:34 am
I love the Coen Brothers films, and have ever since watching Miller’s Crossing at university. The Big Lebowski isn’t a favourite, though, but I appreciate it more each time.
The first time I saw it I was not in a good place, which made it difficult, and the second time didn’t build upon my experience positively, so it took a third viewing to appreciate it.
I saw from the first viewing that what was being presented was a twisted neo-Noir (debt not just to Chandler, in this regard) but felt it didn’t do enough with it. But then, what I had missed (I feel) was that I hadn’t been to LA at that point in my life. Now I *have* been to LA, and suddenly The Big Lebowski makes a great deal more sense!
Nice to see you also picking up on the east-west philosophical schtick, too: I enjoyed that comment in the movie so much last time, and like you it seems to me to be clearly a Taoist-versus-Cowboy reference which is just sheer philosophical genius.
But I actually didn’t start this comment to pick up on this stance at all, but to express my joy at finding another fan of The Hudsucker Proxy, which most Coen fans underrate. This is such a joyous invocation of an earlier era of movies, and so beautifully constructed, that I just can’t help but love it.
Barton Fink may be cleverer, but it is also too clever for its own good - too neatly constructed. Wonderful performances save it, along with some breathtaking set pieces, but the script for Hudsucker still gives me a thrill.
Before leaving Knoxville, I ran a “Coen Brothers Season” for a good friend. She had seen and enjoyed “No Country for Old Men” and so I thought I’d share with her some of the older pieces. The legacy the Coens are building is really unmatched in our current film-making climate - I would make a parallel with Hitchcock without too much of a stretch.
I still have one Coen brothers movie to see: The Man Who Wasn’t There. Still, no need to rush a good thing.
Best wishes!
July 25th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Alex emailed me about MWWT and intimated it’s one of his favorite Coen films. I didn’t care for it much myself, but should probably revisit it. The themes of emotional isolation were a bit much for me at the point in my life when I saw it.
July 25th, 2008 at 6:56 am
The Big Lebowski was the first Coen brothers movie I saw, and remains one of my favourite movies. I love that these filmmakers are dedicated to making simply great movies.
This post inspired an idea for a post of my own, which I thank you for
July 25th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Raising Arizona is probably still my favorite… but the Dude comes in a close second.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
MWWT is a favorite (along with the duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing), but i haven’t seen hudsucker proxy or miller’s crossing yet, so that might be revised after seeing them.
August 4th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Sorry, late comment but I waited to watch MWWT first. I liked it, but probably not enough to call it a new favorite. It did prove that the Coens should have done Hudsucker Proxy in black and white as they originally intended.
Alex: if you liked MWWT you should like Hudsucker Proxy, it’s a bit more screwball (and directly evokes 30s/40s screwball comedies if you’ve seen any of those, such as His Girl Friday). It was somewhat ahead of its time considering that Clooney has helped manage mainstream hits in the style of 30s/40s screwball comedy with Leatherheads and O Brother Where Art Thou (and to a lesser extent, Intolerable Cruelty). Hudsucker was co-written by Sam Raimi (of Evil Dead, Spider-Man) and you can notice a few of his touches and I have noticed that Sam Raimi-haters tend to hate Hudsucker. I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about The Hudsucker Proxy, lately, as it’s come up in conversation a few times.
As for Miller’s Crossing: I consider it my favorite gangster film of all time, and the more I watch the more convinced of that I become, as it manages to drip style and yet have some substance while doing it. It’s certainly inspired a lot of debate in my own family over its meaning and pathos. My brother actually hated it the first time he watched it, but subsequent viewings started to bring to light some of the subtlety he missed the first time.
(My current favorites? Serious drama: Miller’s Crossing. Dark comedy: The Big Lebowski. Light comedy: The Hudsucker Proxy.)