The Fun, Bearable Lightness of Bowling...

Rating: 10/10 (8 September 2016)

As guys, we've all been through this Bohemian times, where we could keep the same underwear for the week, and bed sheets for the month, when the toilet seat could be left open and we could do whatever we wanted in the bathtub without a nagging female voice interrupting our meditation. But now that we settled down, it's with nostalgic eyes that we remember the time we could be guys in the lousiest and laziest meaning of the world, and venerate the one who made this attitude a lifestyle, a state of mind, a philosophy. His name is Jeff Lebowksy aka the Dude, a name fittingly rhyming with attitude, and he's played by the namesake Bridges in the signature role his career much needed.
Indeed, who needs motives, personal backgrounds, goals and all that screen writing hogwash when you have an attitude. The attitude makes the characters who make the film, and that's the way the Coen brothers have it with "The Big Lebowski", bizarrely overlooked at the time of its release, but whose brilliance blossomed in our minds after we got rid of all our preconceived cinematic notions and started to appreciate the laziest character of L.A. But while the Californian urban landscape is integral to the film's 'narrative', I think every man in a way or another can relate to the Dude, starting with his appearance. Basically, he looks like a bum, with his long leonine hair, his shaggy goatee, his Bermudas shorts, flip-flops and bathrobes, but here's a guy who (obviously) is the antithesis of the metro-sexual figure, and that's enough a reason to love him.
What matters for the Dude is to go bowling with his team: Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donnie (Steve Buscemi) and enjoying a White Russian cocktail. Walter is a Nam vet and the kind of friends that make you wish for enemies, and Donnie is the space filler who can't align three sentences before being told to 'shut the **** up". You think it's crazy to hang out with such guys? I have a friend like Walter, and no matter how much of a bastard he could be, we 'forgot about it' while playing pool. Bowling, pool or poker, the point is that if guys were given the opportunity, they would pick fun and idleness as ways of life. And if it was up to the Dude, there would be no plot, two guys could beat and water-board him, he'd let them go the minute they knew it was the wrong Lebowski, but one committed a mistake, he peed on the rug, the one that "tied the room together".
The film is set during the Gulf War, so when he shares his misadventure, Walter paraphrases Bush Sr. and tells the Dude that they crossed the line and he's entitled to demand reparation. If the Dude is the extreme of men's capability to live without rules, Walter is the total opposite and can't envision life without a sense of ethos. He can't play on the Shabbat day even though he's not Jewish, but like he says, just because he divorced from his Jewish wife doesn't mean he should give back the library card. Walter is so wrapped up in his self-righteousness (he point a gun on a player who can't admit he crossed the line) that he's the one who makes the plot move forward, much to the Dude's annoyance. Goodman is the Laurel to Bridges' Hardy and you can't count how many times the Dude realizes the nice mess, he's been gotten into. And the mess all starts with the 'rug' situation.
So, the Dude complains to the Big Lebowski (the late David Huddleston) a tycoon who incarnates the American capitalist dream, and except for his legs, lost in Korea, he has everything: money, power, influence a philanthropic foundation and Bunny, a trophy wife played by Tara Reid. The Big Lebowski throws the 'little' one out of his office, but the Dude tells his spineless assistant (played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) that his boss agreed to leave him a rug as compensation. And as far as he was concerned, all was well that ended well for the Dude, and he could focus on the next game with Jesus Quintana, a Hispanic Bowling champ played by the Coen regular Tarantino. Quintana makes quite an impression when he's introduced but the feeling is immediately (and hilariously) contradicted by the little back-story detail Walter provides.
But we won't have much of Quintana, because there's more going plot=wise, Bunny is kidnapped, his worried husband hires the Dude as a negotiator, and Maude Lebowski, his daughter (Julianne Moore) takes the rug back (and many other things I wouldn't spoil) . Many critics point out the fact that there's not a real plot, and it doesn't matter, even the narrator (mustached legend Sam Elliott reckoned he's lost his train of thoughts) but I think there's one identifiable pattern in the Big Lebowski, the characters have an attitude, which means, they believe in something tangible. The Dude believed in bowling, Walter in bowling and ethos, Donnie in his friends, the Big Lebowski in principles, his assistant in the Big Lebowski so it's all natural that the closest to villains in the film would be nihilists. It's one thing to do nothing but being driven by nothing is beyond reason.
And for all the mess, the Dude and Walter go through, they remains true to their nature and this contrast makes their interaction and situations so damn hilarious, I understand the film needed some musical interludes to let us catch our breath, one of them providing an unforgettable POV shot from within a rolling bowling ball. When knocked up, the Dude only cares for bowling, more than a game, a defining metaphor for the man who slowly rolls over the lane of life. The film also ends on a pure metaphor, because, in bowling terms, "The Big Lebowski" is a strike!