If you read my profile you may have noticed that I have a weakness for hard-boiled detective fiction (usually set in California - the place where tough guy Séamas's seem to congrugate). If Philip Marlowe were to be recast as an aging, over-educated, not too ambitious SoCal surfer dude (who's life seems to center on white russians and bowling) you'd get The Big Lebowski. Among my movie-watching friends there is great debate about where this film stands in the pantheon of Cohen Brothers' cinema - mainly they argue that it is okay, but not their best work; I vociferously counter that it is brilliant (and proceed to belittle their obviously pitiful lack of cinematic skills).)
When the porn king, Jackie Treehorn, sends his strongarm boys to shake down The Dude (mistaking him for the other Lebowski - the millionaire), they don't urinate on his rug - they micturate. And that rug really tied the room together - prompting The Dude to face his richer alter-ego, the other Jeffrey Lebowski, looking for suitable compensation. Leading to more rug trouble. Throw in the highly volitile & unstable Walter Sobchak, some "nihilist" Germans (Uli, Franz and Dieter - and Uli's unnamed girlfirend, Aimee Mann, who I once met in a Brookline liquor store in the early 90s, and I had a serious crush on when I was 16... but I digress), the sexually deviant arch-nemesis bowler, Jesus Quintana - plus The Dude's wonderfully beat-up Ford
- and you have a winner. Oh, and Steve Buscemi ("Donny, you're out of your element!") dies... again.
1 comment:
The Big Lebowski is so full of goodness, I can't even begin to describe what my favourite scene or character is!
Yes, I must see Barton Fink...
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