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Rating:
Declaration of love for the world of losers and homage to film noir. As usual, Joel and Ethan Coen in this unforgettable "The Big Lebowski" propose a multi-layered tale, enjoyable on multiple levels of facetiousness and melancholy.
Released in the roaring year of Titanic, "The Big Lebowski" tells the story of one of (many of) us who, like me, lived on Misfortune Street. Leader of the American protest, signatory of the Port Yuron constituent (the first, not the second), The Dude (Jeff Bridges gaining weight) lives avoiding work like the plague, listening to the beloved Creedence and playing bowling. Next to such a man there could only be the right "wrong" people: Walter Sobchak (John Goodman, immense), a staunch anti-pacifist ("once I dabbled in pacifism, BUT NOT IN VIETNAM") and Donnie (Steve Buscemi), a small, cardiopathic friend by profession "shushed" but the best player of the group's leaky marble. Visited by two payback goons, who had mistaken The Dude for a wealthy namesake and stained the Dude's carpet with urine, the hippie past his prime decides to lodge a complaint to the Big Lebowski in person. He mistreats him like a rag, but The Dude manages to swipe the carpet anyway and stealthily leaves, giving up on the post-paid fellatio of Le Boschi's sweet half, Bunny, soft and buxom as befits a cheerleader.
You can’t really find peace, especially for a pacifist: thanks to a phone call from Leboskio's assistant (Philip Seymour Hoffmann, how great is P.S. Hoffmann always?), Dude is recruited as a detective because Bunny (not Lake) has disappeared, perhaps kidnapped by nihilist musicians, kraftwerked into Autobahn.
Dude will go through the classic detective process à la Chandler (after all the film is set in Los Angeles), with porn mobsters (Jackie Treehorn, a Ben Gazzara in an immortal cameo), degenerate daughters and artist billionaires (splendid Julianne Moore), angry Malibu cops and money servers, crazy black taxi drivers from Eagles, and nihilists with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their heels, pissed off because there wasn't any money...
The ending will be a calm moral victory for our portly hero and his two... oops... his friend Walter, a Polish Catholic observant Jew; the kidnapping was a crystal ball, the great Lebowski was an inflated balloon. The only consistent sphere is Maud's belly, expecting a little Drugandibus while dad will continue the controlled regime of drugs and the extravagant regime of white Russians (Kahlua, Vodka, cream, ice).
Opened, interspersed, and closed by the sly presence, sometimes vocal, sometimes full-figure, of Cowboy Sam Elliott, a lover of sarsaparilla and wisdom ("I've always had a soft spot for the cowboy as a concept"), the story of The Big Lebowski offers, as I mentioned at the beginning, a multisensory enjoyment. At first glance, it's a tender, hilariously bitter story of losers it's impossible not to love; set in the 80s during the Gulf War (the first, not the second), the film talks about figures that were out of place in that sparkling decade. There's no room for those who hippied in search of collective conquests based on peace & love; stoners but very aware of their intentions and their reason, during the years of the drinkable West, when everyone flowed back into Regan's Hedon. Unbalanced, without a home of ideals (someone wandering, someone taking refuge in Vietnam, someone thinking only of bowling), easy prey for human weed killers touting riches and exhibited cynical egoism; figures, however, dense with heroism and a moral rectitude similar to Philip Marlowe in the wolf's kingdom.
And here’s the second layer: the Coen brothers follow, as postmodern Apollonians, the footsteps of old-school hard-boiled detectives, alone against everyone, bent by a punch but not broken in spirit. The Dude shares a lot with the great investigators: the favorite drink, the intuitive approach, and subsequent blunders (memorable is the theft of the sheet under the note of the pornographer; in a nod to "North by Northwest", they bring forth from The Dude's scribblings a facetious priapic-doodle) the apparent amorality that conceals an iron morality, and the boss's chick (this time daughter).
The jokes are abundant and it's very hard, hedging facial paralysis, not to laugh: the derailment of the rust-stained wreck of the Dude while the joint falls in his pants, the dreams in forced unconsciousness stage (among all, the immortal Gutterballs, between Busby Berkeley-like bowling choreographies, flying electricians and nihilists with scissors), the marmot bath, the "Branded" scriptwriter vacuum-packed in the iron lung, the destruction of the Corvette, the funeral in the wind, ‘vaginal art, the marmot bath. The soundtrack is a memorable collage of songs and music, for once functional to the story: from Dylan to Piero Piccioni ("Traffic jam" as porn "cable" music) the chain of saint Anthony of more or less known pearls, with top-listed Creedence Clearwater Revival, raw, Spartan, and direct, all in The Dude's heart.
And the Gypsy Kings rattling loud choruses in the calamitous “Hotel California” during the epiphany of the most unforgettable of this succulent cinematic dish's supporting characters: Jesus Quintana (John Turturro, a true genius), a lilac bowling suit, ball game cunnilingus, Hispanic hysteria.
You don’t mess with Jesus...
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