Character-driven brilliance!

Rating: 10/10 (29 October 2005)

This movie is very personal to me. The Coen Brothers have always been a favorite of my family and The Dude looks, acts, and talks exactly like my dead father.
That said, my high score for this film is not just because I like it, but because it's excellent. I'm going to save the usual great directing, acting, cinematography, editing, and humor (all of which it has) and move into a few unique traits of this film that never cease to fascinate me no matter how many times I watch it.
First of all, the dialog specifically. Move over, Tarantino and Kevin Smith, you have been owned. This dialog is faster, wittier, more real, and creates better characters through tangents than you could hope possible. Was the dialog even written down? Most of the time it seems the actors are just playing off each other's direction and they are talking about whatever they want to, and yet previous conversations and conceits and the like keep re-emerging later, characters go off on regular tangents (and I'm not just talking about the Vietnam War, either), and the actors never, ever fall out of character. It's amazing to behold.
Secondly, the storyline's general arch. Many conversations I've had with people end up going into a lot of discussion over the fact that he never gets his rug back. In fact, the whole movie is kind of tragic in the way The Dude ends up worse off than he was before, but then again he's happier and the status quo has returned, so it's still contained brilliantly. The thing is that the Coen brothers tend to write very character-driven plots, where the character's personalities do so much more than the events they create to propel them into more and more absurd situations. Furthermore, it's not like the characters just move on to the next scene and the last scene is almost irregardless, like a lot of lesser character-driven plots: it all ties together and is contained beautifully. This movie could not have ended any other way.
Finally, I won't bore you with the regular talk about how great a character The Dude is (even though he is), I want to talk about Walter Sobchack. Honestly, this the role John Goodman was born to do, and of course he did it brilliantly. Not only can I not imagine anyone else doing it, I can't imagine anybody else perfectly complimenting Dude. Together with Donnie, the three make a relationship so much more real than almost ever shown on screen.
--PolarisDiB