The Big Lebowski

Every time I see this film I like it more - except for last week. Last week, having enjoyed most of the length of the film, I reached the end somewhat disappointed. Why is this? The film is strange in more ways than is obvious. The narration by Sam Elliott which bookends the movie, and his brief appearance in the middle of it, is one of the more bizarre aspects. The film could easily exist without it. Yet it is a narration which purposefully tells us nothing, and does so from a explicitly biased perspective. We the audience are not supposed to relate in any way with the Texan. Is he voice of authority, morals, the outsider or society? It was something he said that left me disappointed, but I’ll get to that later. The Dude, Jeff Lebowski, played by Jeff Bridges, is assaulted by two men who have confused him with another Jeff Lebowski – a far richer and more important one: ostensibly the ‘big Lebowski’ of the title. From this confusion, The Dude becomes involved in a supposed kidnapping and ransom demand. All he wants, really, is a new rug. He has little to no ambition or intentions. He is just trying to get by, or, as he says: the dude abides. It feels, however, that he is a private detective in a plot from the 1940s (something like Chinatown). The actual private detective that he meets spells this out: he’s playing one side against the other, in bed with everybody, including the beautiful woman. This couldn’t be further from the truth, of course. The Dude has virtually no idea what’s going on. It is a brilliant performance by Jeff Bridges, but we shouldn’t forget John Goodman and Philip Seymour Hoffman (compare him here to his role in Mission Impossible). The music is excellent and the dialogue is a perfect example of the surreal-deadpan style of the Coen brothers. What happens, though, at the end? The Texan’s narration closes the film off, and it was this remark in particular that perturbed me: ‘things seemed to have worked out pretty well for the Dude’. Did they? When you look at it, he is actually worse off than he was at the beginning: one of his closest friends has died, he lost his rug, and didn’t get paid anything by Lebowski. Perhaps the comment is ironic, perhaps the Dude is happy because he can go on bowling, living his life his way with no disturbance. It would feel wrong if he suddenly was given a lot of money, or found love. Something here feels wrong. Can the film be ended satisfactorily? Did the Coen brothers do the best they could with the character and the plot they had created?