Catch next week’s Coen Brothers Film Experience entry on Wednesday, December 8th: O Brother Where Art Thou

I’m going to mix things up a bit with this discussion and start out point blank with my Bottom Line:

The Bottom Line: 5/5. If there are only 21 words that you take away from my review & discussion of the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski”, let them be: “If you haven’t seen ‘The Big Lebowski’, see it. If you have seen it, see it again! This movie fucking rocks.

There are seriously not enough adjectives in the English language to describe this movie. Stuff like ‘hilarious’, ‘awesome’, and ‘fucking far out man’, while they are true, don’t seem to do ‘Lebowski’ justice. The more I think about how to describe my relationship with ‘Lebowski’, the more I keep falling upon the word “fuck”. Not in the context of how much sex or nudity is in the actual movie (although it is the first Coen Brothers film to feature both in any great quantity), and I don’t mean in terms of the cuss connotation (even though ‘Lebowski’ is clearly one of the Coen Brothers’ films that showcase many a meaty expletive). I mean in terms of the word that I feel is necessary to fully describe how awesome “The Big Lebowski” actually is.

I’ll give you some examples: a) whenever someone asks me if they should watch the movie a first or repeat time, my response is something along the lines of, ‘fuck yeah you should”. or b) if someone ever asks me if I would like to watch the movie with them, they’ll get a “fucking A I would!”. In this scenario, there will usually be a mental or literal fist pump if this said person will be experiencing “The Big Lebowski” for the first time. Finally, c)throughout the film, as each scene comes to an end, once I’m done laughing my ass off, or giggling like a school girl as I relish the scenes, the music, the characters and the complete and utter awesome cluster fuck that is “The Big Lebowski”, I’ll generally utter a mental or hushed, “fucking A…”

If you can’t tell by now, “The Big Lebowski” is not only one of the Coen Brothers’ best films, screwball comedy or otherwise but it is also now my favorite.

Read on if you want to know the details…

“The Big Lebowski” is set in the early nineties and is a snapshot in the life of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski. The film is told as a story as opens to the awesome narration voice of Sam Elliott as we see a very dude-like tumble weed bounce aimlessly through Los Angeles. The Dude is played to perfection by Jeff Bridges, and focuses on his reaction to and the consequences of the fact that he gets mistaken for a millionaire also named Jeffery Lebowski (David Huddleston) who owes money to a shady group of rug pee-ers. The remaining characters, and characters they are include The Dude’s bowling buddies: Walter (John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Bushemi), a group of nihilists played by Peter Stormare, Flea, and Torsten Voges, and the remaining pitch perfect eccentric roles played by Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reid, and John Tuturro as “Jesus”, the bowling ex-sex offender.

I think one of the reasons that I truly love “The Big Lebowski” so much is because it is one of the few Coen Brothers films that gets me full on laughing out loud. I realize, and can appreciate that many, if not all of their films do have comedic elements to them, but most of the time they are very dark and while funny, it’s rare that I’ll find myself laughing out loud. They are more enjoyed with a smile or a snicker. There is something about the dynamic between the Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and Steve Bushemi trifecta that really gets me. They work with the back and forth Coen dialogue so well and hit the timing so perfectly that you believe that they are those characters and that they are seriously having that conversation. Add to these moments, inspired scenes like where Seymour Hoffman’s character reacts to Tara Reid wanting to give The Dude a blow job, or The Dude’s run in with a ‘marmot’, or the random friend of Julianne Moore’s character laughing his ass off in the background of a scene and there is rarely a moment where I’m not laughing out loud or suppressing a giggle. On the very literal comedic level, “The Big Lebowski” delivers in spades.

On a deeper level, the Coen Brothers don’t disappoint either: their use of the term “The Big Lebowski” to represent, my words not theirs, a cluster fuck, The Dude’s car symbolizing the spiraling descent into said cluster fuck and even so far as to inject some early nineties war politics into their story is all so much fun.

On a final note, it’s interesting to see the Coen Brothers rip themselves off in “Burn After Reading” from elements in “The Big Lebowski”. Most prominent are the scenes where The Dude is being followed by someone in a car and the eventual confrontation with the P.I. played by Jon Polito. This same thing takes place, almost exactly in ‘Burn’. It’s what Polito’s character says to The Dude that got me thinking about the Iraq war link. The P.I. says to The Dude that he likes the way that he’s playing one side against the other all for his own means. In thinking about this, that’s exactly what theorists say about the original and the current Iraq war, that they are being waged to benefit the US for the oil and not necessarily to rid the world of terror. Since the first Iraq war was a complete cluster fuck, it only makes sense that they continuously mention the war or Saddam throughout the movie. Plus the Coens are very sneaky, so when when they mention the coming of a ‘Little Lebowski’, in a film released in 1998, I can’t help but wonder if they are alluding to the fact that their might be another Iraq war on the horizon, or if they felt like alluding to the fact that their might be a younger Bush in the White House soon. Hindsight of course is 20/20 so its easy to believe it in retrospect but either way it’s fun to image the brothers sitting at a table and brainstorming about the ‘little Lebowski’… Take a look at this Slate.com article for more on the Iraq war allegory.

Once again! The Bottom Line: 5/5. If there are only 21 words that you take away from my review & discussion of the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski”, let them be: “If you haven’t seen ‘The Big Lebowski’, see it. If you have seen it, see it again! This movie fucking rocks.

It’s very tough now to rank films in the order of preference. What makes it so difficult is that a lot of these films are great. no denying it. I think I’m going to have to dethrone “A Serious Man” from the top spot in deference to “The Big Lebowski”. After eight films viewed for my Coen Brothers Film Experience, here is the list of films in the order of my liking:

1. The Big Lebowski (1998)
2. A Serious Man (2009)
3. Fargo (1996)
4. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
5. Blood Simple (1984)
6. Barton Fink (1991)
7. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
8. Raising Arizona (1987).

Let me know what you think. What is your favorite Coen Brothers film of these 8? Leave your comments below or find me on Twitter.