Ahem. Speaking as someone who has seen the movie....
The Big Lebowski is very much Its Own Thing. It's positioned somewhere in the Venn Diagram of a 1970s new wave cinema buddy movie, a Raymond Chandleresque neo-noir (with appropriately incomprehensible plot) and a 1990s stoner comedy--without really being any of the above. (And since Sam Elliott, cowboy hat and all, is the narrator, throw in "western" too--why not?)
Jeff Bridges holds the movie together, the way the Dude's rug "holds the room together." He's hardly your typical noir protagonist; as Joel Coen has said in interviews, he's probably the person LEAST capable of untangling the plot.
But that's not important. You can look at the Dude and like him for his loyalty to his (severely) damaged friends, Walter and Donny (John Goodmam and Steve Buscemi), his vaguely anti-establishment attitide and his zen slacker chill...
Or: you can smell the patchouli on his bowling shirt and spit: "You're over 40! Get a job, loser! God!" (The Coens say the fans think about the Dude and his philosophy much more than they do.) YMMV.
Either way, the Dude will keep on keeping on in his own special way.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2023-08-21 03:28 pm (UTC)The Big Lebowski is very much Its Own Thing. It's positioned somewhere in the Venn Diagram of a 1970s new wave cinema buddy movie, a Raymond Chandleresque neo-noir (with appropriately incomprehensible plot) and a 1990s stoner comedy--without really being any of the above. (And since Sam Elliott, cowboy hat and all, is the narrator, throw in "western" too--why not?)
Jeff Bridges holds the movie together, the way the Dude's rug "holds the room together." He's hardly your typical noir protagonist; as Joel Coen has said in interviews, he's probably the person LEAST capable of untangling the plot.
But that's not important. You can look at the Dude and like him for his loyalty to his (severely) damaged friends, Walter and Donny (John Goodmam and Steve Buscemi), his vaguely anti-establishment attitide and his zen slacker chill...
Or: you can smell the patchouli on his bowling shirt and spit: "You're over 40! Get a job, loser! God!" (The Coens say the fans think about the Dude and his philosophy much more than they do.) YMMV.
Either way, the Dude will keep on keeping on in his own special way.
The Dude abides.