Monday, July 14, 2014

The Big Lebowski: Second thoughts

 I was recently sent a lot of music to listen to, and I'm really looking forward to diving into it. I've also got my copy of The Hobbit in the mail. And today, apparently, I'm going to be experiencing an Excellent Adventure. Really hoping that the combined forces of those things will be enough to scrub the dust of this movie out of my brain. Time to help out the cleaning process with a big old thought dump.

The title's wrong. It should be called Walter the Asshole. Or maybe Walter the Asshole Goes to Town, and there can be a sequel eventually with a different appended title. Now if I were the movie titles guy it would be Walter the Rectum because I'm polite like that, but let's be straight here, the man is an asshole. He's also, dare I say, the only active force in a world of reactive and passive ones. Bunny sort of passively falls off the earth (you might call going to Vegas active, but her actual, reasonable motive for doing so IS NOT her motive for doing so, she just kind of up and says "Vegas is where I will be" for a week or so and doesn't tell anyone). Everyone else reacts to this fact, which then cycles back on a perfectly passive man whose rug gets pissed on.

Seriously, everyone in this movie is essentially reacting to a set of really stupid combined circumstances. It's a domino effect of ridiculous, and the only one who's not reactive is the pointless human wrecking ball/Vietnam War documentary that is Walter. Walter knocks the Dude into Lebowski's path, Walter inserts his mania into situations that propel the Dude's circumstances even further south as a direct result, Walter goes to antagonize a kid, wrecks a nice car, and gets the Dude's car summarily wailed upon in short order. Walter starts the fight that gets Donny dead - REACTIVELY, I might add, he wasn't even a participant. The man is a festival of short temper and poor judgment and the only truly active character in the entire film.

Surely there must be a statement somewhere in there. Even if that statement is "you're a schmuck for expecting deep things out of this movie," there's something driving the writer to put this on the screen. Let me try and break down a few ideas here.

There's an obvious political dimension to all of this, I think. Walter is the definition of a conservative; he's literally all about the past, he dwells on war and is extremely faithful to a religion that he married into, because he's divorced and has nothing else. He's a fringe conservative, too, a gun nut who believes in being a Real Man and has a new conspiracy theory for every circumstance. Even when he's right about something, it's with no evidence to support it and he is right in essentially the wrong way. The Dude, by contrast, is the liberal, the hippie pot-smoking laid-back free love stereotype that's basically the only thing I know about 60s culture. He's on a fringe of his own; jobless, subsisting as a crazy individualist in a world that would just like to ask him "why?" and thoroughly post-relevance, an ex-stick-it-to-the-manner who came out of his birthing era with nothing and nobody. The third man on this bowling team is Donny. What is there to say about Donny, besides shut the fuck up Donny? He's quiet, only really talking to try and understand and clarify various points. He doesn't have the whole picture, and he'd like it, but nobody's really talking to him. His role is to fill in the team of three, to get told to shut the fuck up by someone who has a big picture, and to otherwise just be there. In the end he dies for a cause he didn't particularly believe in and certainly didn't stand up for, just because a human wrecking ball got pissy.

A metaphor, perhaps, for the rest of us. Looking for the big picture, being told we're too dumb to get it so just shut up and go along. Or maybe for the audience, since I was looking for the big picture and by the end was definitely just going along with it all.

So if the movie's supposed to identify these political ideologies, fringe though they are, in these people, what point is it making out of them? I could go on a high-minded tear through the events of the film, trying to put them in this column or that column and add them to a big political allegory, but looking at how it ends, and really looking back at the whole film, that would be pointless. It would be pointless because the point that's really being made is that these people don't matter. The extent of Walter's ridiculous antics is two destroyed cars and a dead guy. The extent of the Dude's foray into the mixed up world of Lebowski boils down to a pregnancy and a handful of people getting their preexisting beliefs confirmed. They don't accomplish anything. Given how fucked-up the journey is I'm inclined to say Donny probably accomplished more in life simply by being offscreen more frequently. While the Dudes of the world do nothing but philosophize until they're forced to take a stand for some issue or other, the Walters are these active human fireballs looking for something to go off on and finding out the world just doesn't care. There's no real outlet for their rage, which is why it never goes away. They're looking to demand something of the world that boils down to eight points vs. zero points for the round and the league's just going to step in and tell you off anyway, you know. Meanwhile, the Dude gets nothing. Literally nothing. He goes on a quest for no payoff (so did I by extension), ending up without his $20000, without the girl (probably better off), down one friend and one clean rug, and with a great many bruises for his trouble. What did he get during his quest? A lot of limo rides, a lot of free drinks, and a lot of people offering him things. The Dudes of the world are right there, ready to be placated back into their lives by the notion that people reacting to them at all seems like an accomplishment. Drinks are had, expensive services provided, commitments made, and it all materializes to zero in the end.

That's the sort of political read on it. There's of course more to get into, a conversation about men detached from women and how sexual morality and gender stereotypes are held up by increasingly powerless and isolated men. Lebowski has a trophy wife, but she's ultimately his only "accomplishment" in a world where the truth of him is his lack of wealth and tremendous powerlessness inside a facade of success. And he can't stand her! He can't stand her because it doesn't work anymore. There was an era where the wife would impress or be a status symbol, but she's her own person rather than an object and, whatever the merits of her own life or lack thereof, that lies outside the frame of reference of an old-school view of men and women. Lebowski's own success and wealth, such as it is, is in the hands of his daughter, who never appears on screen with him or even talks to him and by all accounts can't stand him. And those are the female characters in the movie. Maud's decision to get pregnant by the Dude is hugely subversive to gender norms, even for a hippie like him - he's surprised to have been used, uninformed, for conception, and immediately starts thinking in terms of parental involvement and worries about child support. Of course he does; whether or not he knows it, he accepts a certain paradigm of the world that has been dictated to him. Walter's relationship with a woman is to be exploited for obnoxious favors by his ex-wife. He's lost sight of the end of the relationship and puts a significant piece of his identity in what hers was because it's implied that she's the one who sought the divorce. I still want that, is Walter's sort of thought zone. I can get that back with favors, with holding on to that identity, with keeping in touch with her, I can get it back. Somehow. Man's all guns and crowbars and rage, tell me that's not at least partly sexual frustration.

Ultimately, though, I don't think deep levels of analysis are relevant. The movie's about a drop of water hitting a still pond (or a stream of urine, as the case may be) and all the fish reacting to the ripples, when all the pond really wants is to be still again. Nothing happens, ultimately, nothing changes, nothing fantastical or of great substance is spoken of. A man dies of a heart attack. People continue with their lives. The quest, the mission, it didn't change anyone at all. Embezzlement happened. A lady got pregnant off a one-night stand. Police threw a guy out of their town. The rich remain rich, the poor remain poor. In this acceptance of "shit goes down, same as it ever was" it's almost zen.

I don't think it's a great movie. Parts of it are way too self-indulgent, and parts of it are filled with what Nan would call "whittering" or "nattering," people just going on about things like their focus on them and the amount of words that they can say on a topic make them deeper and more interesting rather than one-note and annoying. There was probably one layer too many to the would-be "mystery," one too many episodic side-trips to meet whoever for whatever reason. I got lost because the movie figured I could miss this particular bit and still generally get it all at the end, and that's not a positive thing. I can appreciate what all is on the screen, but everyone's a flat character being walked along a convoluted trail because we're supposed to appreciate the trail more for being unencumbered by any idea that it's going places. It's surprisingly real and true to life; a lot of people really are flat characters. In the end though, the movie, like the room of its would-be protagonist, is left with nothing to tie it together.

18 comments:

  1. I suspect that this might be one of those movies that grows on you after seeing it a couple of times. I say "suspect", because I only saw it once, and never had any intention of watching it a couple more times to see if it would grow on me ;-)

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    1. It definitely does, that's part of the point. I LOVE the Coen brothers but I walked out of this one thinking they'd missed the boat...but the movie gets in your head and becomes funnier and funnier on each new viewing.

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  2. I wonder if this is a film that benefits from viewers having seen oodles and oodles of other films beforehand - just so they can catch the fun its having subverting all the pre-established tropes and genres (film noir, for example).

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  3. This film is engaged in a long conversation with decades of both film noir and Westerns, and any viewer who hasn't got a hefty backlog of the classics of those genres under his or her belt will miss about 90% of this movie.

    Whoever suggested this movie to you to *start you off* on either noir or Western is a fool.

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    1. That was me-- I suggested it on neither basis, but on the assumption that, since he said in the message board thread that kicked all this off that he was only really familiar with movies from the 50s and before, that he would have at least seen a couple noirs and westerns.

      Instead, he was like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie.

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    2. I've seen Westerns. I wouldn't call this a Western. Westerns have charm, and this movie seems devoted to trading that in for a cocktail of zen and fatuousness.

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  4. "I don't think it's a great movie."

    I'm sorry, Jeremy, but we cannot be friends.

    Ever.

    No, I'm just kidding, but still, I think maybe you are out of your element. You're familiar with old, pre-1950 movies, so I assumed at least a little noir and western were included in there somewhere when I stumped for this.

    Also, Salendrak is right. Give it another try in a few months, and I suspect you'll change your tune.

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    1. I super think Raising Arizona is the right place to start with The Coen Brothers' films. 100%. It's a tight story, with some of the cleanest and best Coen depth, motifs, and general commentary. It doesn't have the same meandering pace and noncommittal ending as TBL. I think for most of The Coen Bros' films you have to understand some basics of other film styles. I think for TBL you have to specifically understand Coen Bros films, or at least seen a few.

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    2. whereas I would say that O Brother Where Art Thou would be the place to start with Coen Bros, mainly because of the music and the pacing. It's probably THE most accessible Coen Bros flick out of all of them, particularly as it's based on the Odyssey and as such doesn't suffer as much from Hollywood tropes and in-jokes.

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    3. Anon, I think I agree with you. O Brother was my first Coen flick, and it's definitely a lot more accessible.

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    4. and by "accessible" don't think I mean "Jeremy isn't intellectual enough to handle CB movies", what I mean is that he's shown here with his second thoughs post that he is actually quite sophisticated, to the point where some of the more self-indulgent Coen Brothers style incestuous Hollywood navel-gazing doesn't appeal to him. I don't think we as participants in his journey should rain down controversy when he points out that the emperor has no clothes, so to speak. The Big Lebowski has got some hilarious dialogue but it truly is a very, very thin movie that mostly rolls along on the appeal of Jeff Bridges' engaging acting; without him this movie arguably would have been a resounding dud. And, unless you're that particular breed of stoner/slacker/ liberal arts GenX/GenY demographic to appreciate the in jokes (which I freely admit to being) it probably doesn't resonate; even moreso if you've no good context for it.

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    5. Yeah, even though this is "the" Coen brothers movie for a lot of people, it's really NOT the first one to watch--it's soaked in their bizarre sense of humour that will have you scratching your head if you haven't already been exposed to it in small doses. Raising Arizona, True Grit, the Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, even Miller's Crossing are all better entries into their canon. Miller's Crossing is one of my all-time favourite movies, and despite being dense and a bit weird I think it's pretty accessible. If I'm allowed to add something to your list, Jeremy, that would be it!

      The thing about the Coens is that every movie they make is quite different, too--even if you don't like one there's a good chance you'll like something else they've done. They ping-pong back and forth from light comedy to really dark thriller, from simple and streamlined movies to incredibly dense and complex plots, from straightforward to surreal.

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    6. I don't like any of these people, I don't want to know more about them, I'm uninterested in their world and their way of life. I think the merit to be found in this movie is deciding it's about something, or else in deciding someone was being exceedingly clever in making a movie about nothing. Another commenter said it's a movie that's just the filmmaker laughing at me for trying to see something in it. Maybe that's the case. Either way... I don't think I want to revisit this movie anytime soon. I appreciate that it must have some kind of charm that other people like... me, I just don't get it.

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  5. No, he's absolutely right. While I enjoy the whole dialogue-driven theme of the Big Lebowski, the entire movie is in essence sort of reminds me of all my college friends who took a Psych 101 or introductory poli-sci course and would get stoned at a party and become insufferable experts on some random topic or another. It **IS** highly indulgent. It's got fun one-liners and some silly slapstick but ultimately it's just kind of a grating rambling polticized take on First World / White People Problems in L.A. during the timeframe.

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  6. Following your observations about Walter's psychology, I repeat my recommendation from the First Thoughts post: Check out CUTTER'S WAY. Just have a comedy ready to watch afterwards.

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  7. I like the Coen Brothers. Not everything they've done, but most of what I do like...I really like. Lebowski isn't my favorite Coen Brothers movie, so it's one of the few borderline movies. I enjoy it...but it's not a favorite.

    Really, I think the best CB movie to start with is their first. 'Blood Simple'. It introduces a lot of the themes and techniques they'll refine in later movies. Then 'Raising Arizona' to show their range. Then, probably, 'O Brother! Where Art Thou?'...because it's great and because of the music.

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  8. I never have seen this movie. I'm not in any particular hurry, either. :)

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  9. I would say that I would consider this film to be the perfect example of a total comedy of errors - everything happens because people make incorrect assumptions about other people and about themselves

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