The American Loser !

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2008)

The American young man who fought in Vietnam yesterday became now a 40-years-old hippie, all-the-time stoned unemployed bum, who lives the crazy world of the early 1990s America.. As what exactly? The possible hero of this very world! How is that? That's the knack, and the crack, of this black farce.
(Lebowski) is the name of the rich famous billionaire, and the name of the poor sluggish dude also, and the irony of the situation means that both of them are men, disabled (one crippled, and one doped!), having problems, yet only one is noble or at least less mean. This is the main irony which the whole thing had been grounded on, because that last characteristic of our good old type "A" idiot is the very thing which made him such a hero of his world, and what a world indeed, as we've been watching such a punchy bunch of the most sick, contemptible, foolish, defeated, dull, opportunist, criminal variety of all time, or to be specific that time of 1991 which the movie chooses carefully to make its events and point of view too.
The Coen brothers made a sarcastic epitome of the American society by vivid sense of humor and such a dark discerning satire in the same time. Whereas the whole commentary vents the spleen on the powers of the big master corporations and their small beaten victims too. There is that unique caricature community: the rich people are good deceivers, hate each others, have no moralities, or even a next generation! Then the poor people are maybe quite the same, but with some love (the friendship of Dude and Walter), some innocence, and had been utilized by the rich people all along; the rich Lebowski and his game with the dude, the powerful characters who want the dude to bring the money or find the wife, Maude Lebowski / Julianne Moore wants to get a baby from the dude as a typical non-noisy father! They form, all together, the ideal pieces of an anti-Utopian collapsed world!
Moreover, what is the art of this world anyway, as the truthful reflection of it: the high art of (Maude Lebowski / Julianne Moore) which's absurd and too arduous to understand, long TV shows which their author lives as dead maybe like his viewers who the rest of them are as deranged as (Walter / John Goodman) his biggest fan, and finally the porn movies which their producer sees logically that the molds of entertaining have gone low so let's make sex as nobody needs stories anymore!
So in that kind of world there is no wonder at all when you have such a passive funny losers like the dude and his mental violent friend who both are dying by their Vietnam past and playful present, so bowling is their life which literally and metaphorically was their daily illusory victory, and now it makes sense when the Coens put it all cleverly in the early shadows of the Iraq's war as maybe the next helpless Vietnam; as if nothing changed since the first sin as long as the dude is still the same lazy brainless tumbler, being the perfect puppet in the hands of the perverse bossy players who had all the powers. However, his sole virtue is that he's well-meaning to be everybody's fool, and smart enough to grasp their perfidy and meanness after all!
I loved some talented touches which create such solid comic cosmos: The owner of the house is a ruling man yet another loser, (Saddam Hussein) the president of Iraq at the time became an upcoming part of the fancy big game, as in the second dream, where the dude himself is the ball in the hands of the rich brats, the office of the rich (Lebowski) looks like the oval office of the American president in the white house, The Dude is flying over the city then falls; like failed Superman, the fine genuine cowboy, or the original American, played by (Sam Elliott), is the narrator; ironically named on the credits as The Stranger, there is no complete sane love story in here at all! And the sudden death of the poor friend, (Donny / Steve Buscemi), "as all the young youth who died before him!" to make sure that the next generation will be sick already by the defeat of their lousy mentors, and they'll be weaker to get along with all of that dominating madness around. Although I didn't like that death as something a bit out of the drama, but maybe it was made to confirm the sense of loss at the end.
There were some flaws; like how did the dude perceive the hidden truth?! Characters like a homosexual bowling player named Jesus, or a landlord who loves experimental theater weren't comic or part of the drama, being just odd characters for oddity. But aside from that, everything was hilariously sincere to the true lunatic nature of the lead character and its world; for instance, the 2 dreamy sequences. As for the acting, it was a dexterous comedy from everybody, but I thought that (John Goodman) did much better, and more accurate job as (Walter) than (Jeff Bridges) as (The Dude).
All in all, it's some rereading of that world which is unbalanced; utterly like its hero (Lebowski), so by far you must understand easily what the meaning of (The BIG Lebowski) is. It isn't a reference to who would be the most important (Lebowski) in the movie, No, it's a smart hint to a Big community of (Lebowski) dudes out of the movie!