The Dude Abides

Rating: 9/10 (27 October 2015)

The Big Lebowski starts and ends with narrative voice-over, which seems to be out of place. A well-moustached stranger with a cowboy hat chronicles mysteriously and tenderly a tale for the times, and tumbleweed blows through not great lonely western plains, but down- town Los Angeles. Yes, the City of Angels itself, but the glitter is often substituted for the gritty in those noir detective works. The Texan acts as a filter; he doesn't approve of the Dude's profanity or laziness, but then again, isn't the hero of these stories supposed to be a morally ambiguous figure? This is not the Golden Age of detective novels.
The Coens throw Bridges knee deep into this love letter of sorts to the great noirs. It is set in urban California much like The Big Sleep, but the Dude is not the hard-boiled detective, harbouring darks thoughts and living endlessly on a cigarette. He is unemployed, dressed in a bathrobe instead of a trenchcoat, and lives on White Russians and pot. There is a clever shot where he contemplates himself in the mirror of a TIME cover. The whole narrative is set into motion not by his own motivations, but by the bickering of his best friend Walter. John Goodman plays the impulsive live-wire veteran, who has the ability to spin any conversation into one concerning war, patriotism and freedom; Donny's eulogy is sorely lacking. The trio lovingly frequent a bowling alley which houses an assortment of plucky figures, instead of a seedy and neon-defaced bar which spits out slow jazz. When a gun gets pulled out, or any sort of violence whatsoever, the Dude protests. When he is confronted by the bizarre bowling rival/sex offender in Jesus, he has no witty comeback but manages to mumble out one of his classic lines.
We delve into deeper mysteries. A rogue phone-call leads Lebowski to the film's femme fatale as he meanders up a dark alleyway. She is given an apt introduction, swinging wildly as she dabbles in abstract erotic art and speaks pointedly about gender truths in a British accent. As tradition states, they sleep together, but it isn't the desperate romantic affair we expect. Later, Lebowski follows up on another lead on a well-dressed and spoken millionaire (that is to say, he is hauled there against his will), and the architecture is sleek, modern, intimidating. The Dude lounges with his White Russian. The Coens question the genre with every turn. We have strange characters like Maude's sophisticated bald friend, who laughs with high pitched derision but does not harbour evil plans. A covert car follows him around the film, and ends up being a rather nervous private investigator who is thrilled to meet another PI of such great talent and ability (which speaks about his own competence). The Dude is bamboozled with over-elaborate demands in a increasingly complex and twisted kidnapping plot, and fails to complete any of them. In a rare instance where he takes action, the camera eagerly zooms upon a hastily written and cryptic message. The Coens parody a similar scene in Hitchcock's North by Northwest here, but the Dude finds not a vital clue, but a crude drawing of an erection.
The opening credits lovingly detail the bowling alley and all its regulars to the tune of Bob Dylan. There are other dream-like sequences which increasingly up the chaos, and in another film they might lead to some sort of bigger picture or unearth some grand conspiracy, but here it just leads to more profanity-laden demands for explanation. They are stylised with great care and hint at the noir influence, but perhaps through the lens of the Dude's stoner lifestyle; being crushed by a giant bowling ball which spins in a dizzying POV, running raggedly in the night while being backlit by police cars, and an elaborate interpretive dance number set to the counter-culture tune Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In). Elsewhere Maude romantically confronts the hero of the story by looking down at him and upside down in a moment of incompetence, friends encounter a piece of 'culture' at the dance recital (but how loyal is the Dude!), and in a scarce moment of clarity and realisation, the Holmes figure reveals all via a dramatic flashback which visualises the murky millionaire figure in ominous shadows and a lightning storm.
Of course, the essence of film noir is that our characters are trapped within a world of chaos and moral greys and indifference, only here our hero is beyond ordinary, and somehow stumbles upon the right answer despite his incompetence and laid-back approach. It is here that Coens extract much of the humour. Bridges stutters his way through an explanation of why he has neither ransom nor kidnappee. He crudely constructs a device to stop the frequent intrusions, only to have the door open the other way, and then later trips on the plank himself. Philip Seymour Hoffman is wonderful as a spineless and obedient servant who lavishes praise upon his master and echoes his sentiments in a very moderate manner. A little boy is remarkably stone faced, and Walter, who takes every transgression as an affront on himself and America, over-reacts in the most hilarious way, and is shocked to find he has targeted the wrong car. Later he attempts to unveil a conspiracy, but ends up dumping a disabled man onto the floor. And in that climatic 'fight', a bowling ball is substitute for a mace and Donny dies of a heart attack, his ashes blowing in the wind, and the Dude's face. Next week he goes bowling, and forgets about the whole affair. You know, strikes and gutters.