A cult classic that has only ripened since its release in 1998, a loony Chandler-noir featuring cannabis, White Russians, and a surfeit of bowling imagery, The Big Lebowski is an unforgettable comedy whose parts are greater than the whole (which is a whirling mishmash of action, absurdity, and subterfuge). These parts, outshining alone the film as a single impression, make up its many glorious moments, its satire and absurdity, its casual self-amusement, and its straight-faced insouciance.
Among these outstanding parts are the characters of The Dude, Walter Sobchak, and Theodore Kerabatsos; Maude Lebowski and Jesus Quintana; the Big Lebowski and Brandt; the eccentricities of Walter, the silencing of Donny, and the utter nonchalance of that sluggard, The Dude; Maude’s predatory feminism and bohemian chic; the aggressiveness of Jesus, pederast and sex offender, hip-thrusting in purple bowling garb; the lookalike fascination of the Big Lebowski and his manservant, Brandt; and the various mannerisms of each of these characters, subtly enhancing the memorability of the film—for how strange it seems that, having watched the film, one experiences these many moments as from a trickling faucet, each trickle inspiring a reevaluation of the film and a desire to see it again.
This is the strange pull of The Big Lebowski, whose glorious and casual greatness, voiced by many, deserves the attention of this article and my wholehearted recommendation.
After two thugs assault the Dude in his apartment, a Los Angeles shanty replete with trinkets, scented candles, a minibar containing White-Russian ingredients, and a rug that “really tied the room together,” a “Chinaman” urinates on the rug and catalyzes an errant adventure for the Dude, who seeks rug-restitution from the other Lebowski, the Big Lebowski—a mogul (discovered to be an embezzler) for whom the Dude was mistaken. These are the mainsprings of the plot, which is a ticklish running gag and a parody of the Chandler era, when noir film tried to take itself seriously.
The predominant setting of the story is the bowling alley, where The Dude and his friends, Walter Sobchak and Donny Kerabatsos, practice and compete in tournaments whose seriousness only Walter seems to acknowledge. He is burly, beery, and aggressive, a Vietnam veteran disdaining ideologies such as nihilism and pacifism, a converted Jew that honors the Sabbath, and a vehement, gun-wielding spokesman for bowling fairness and regulation. He also regulates the input of their pariah friend, Donny, to whom he can be heard saying, “shut the fuck up, Donny,” more often than Donny says anything at all.
Walter is a character that one should relish, because his lines are the most quotable of the film. The most memorable Walter-quote is debatable, but my favorite is that involving his incredulity of the nihilists, who threatened the Dude after dumping a feral marmot into his bathtub: “Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” Nihilism has never looked so unappealing.
The character of Maude, the estranged bohemian daughter of the Big Lebowski, makes her entrance when the Dude visits her loft, having had his new rug reclaimed by the thugs of Maude (and not of Jackie Treehorn). She appears suspended from the ceiling, naked and wearing a harness, a humorless hussy of the avant-garde. Explaining that she reclaimed the rug because it was not her father’s to give away, Maude charges the Dude with reclaiming the ransom that he never delivered since it belongs to her family’s foundation. The Dude, in any case and with whatever allegiances, a milky White Russian in hand, sets out to recover the ransom with his usual unhurried nonchalance.
After The Dude’s car is stolen, ostensibly by Larry Sellers (who is failing sociology), Walter takes revenge on what he thinks Larry bought with the briefcase money in the stolen car: a cherry-red Chevrolet Corvette idling in the street. This leads to the retaliation of a neighbor, and the madness engulfing two cars and Larry as a viable suspect in the Lebowski saga. Captured by the Treehorn thugs some time later, The Dude drinks a White Russian in the stately beachside mansion of Jackie Treehorn (the Jackie Treehorn), who narcotizes him and thus sends him off, careering through a bowling fantasy with Maude; the thugs meanwhile search his apartment, coming up with nothing, and Maude seduces The Dude while he is still recovering, hoping to extract his seed and conceive a child.
The heroic dynamism of the Dude surfaces: he claims that he was an author of the Port Huron Statement, and in response to Maude’s asking about him, he says, “I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.” He is an utter anachronism, having loafed through decades beginning with the 1960s, Woodstock, and the counterculture, after which he affirmed that easiness and comfort were to fill his days.
The climax of the story carries an epiphany with which The Dude realizes that the Big Lebowski has gulled him into delivering the ransom (containing only phone books) in order to avoid danger while keeping the actual ransom for himself, and that Bunny Lebowski was the friend of the Nihilists, who feigned her kidnapping for the ransom. The dénouement of The Big Lebowski thus reveals that the Dude, carrying phone books as a ransom, was entrusted with rescuing Bunny—a pawn to her friends, the Nihilists—who was herself so distant from her husband, the Big Lebowski, that he was all-too-willing to connive at her disappearance in exchange for the ransom that he had embezzled from his family’s foundation.
The Big Lebowski is a conniver and embezzler, Bunny a nymphomaniac and a reckless traitor, the Nihilists merely nihilists (for that, the film seems to clarify, is their great sin), and Maude a sperm-stealer as ruthless as Jackie Treehorn and his thugs. These characters are scummy and absurd, warping the heavenly casualness of The Dude and infecting it with bedlam, bad motives, and skullduggery; in comparison with these that are besetting him, ceaselessly and from all sides, The Dude is the naïve “good guy,” like Elliott Gould as Phillip Marlowe, without all the good intentions.
This is the argument of the character as presented by Sam Elliott, the cowboy narrator, at the conclusion of The Big Lebowski: “It’s good knowin’ he’s out there. The Dude. Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.” The Dude, far from high-minded and upstanding, is careless and self-regarding, a simpleminded sluggard, a holy fool of Los Angeles. But he is also harmless, far from the turmoil and lucre of that other Lebowski residing in the same city. Thus the most optimistic takeaway with which one finishes The Big Lebowski, leaving the Dude to expand in the memory, is that we had better leave our idlers to life’s sandbox. For they counterbalance the welter of the playground, peaceably calling others to join them in the sand.
