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The 25 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years
3. The Dude- The Big Lebowski
The Coen Brothers are adored by critics for the same reasons any other filmmakers are, really. They work in adventurous, unconventional tones. They honor genres of the past that most people no longer care about. Their characters are both stylized and realistic. Money is often the simple motivation of those characters, but—as in Fargo or Blood Simple or No Country for Old Men—that money becomes irrelevant as the characters are enveloped by unforeseen consequences and moral confusion. In other words, the money becomes a MacGuffin halfway through, and critics like any filmmaker who can confidently use MacGuffins.
As critically admired as the Coens are, however, they have been commercially unsuccessful for one reason: Their characters fail. Dramaturgically. As in, they have simple goals that they don’t achieve. We are told that mainstream audiences prefer happy endings in which the hero triumphantly wins and changes in some way, so let’s compare that outcome to three (spoiler-rich) Coen endings:
1. The Man Who Wasn’t There: Our protagonist is executed by electric chair.
2. A Simple Man: A massive tornado appears to wash away our protagonists to confirm that we occupy an unjust and perhaps meaningless universe.
3. Barton Fink: Depending on your reading, either our protagonist is trapped with a fallen angel in his own psychotic hell, or he has merely hallucinated that same scenario, which still speaks to his unhinged psychological state.
Which brings us to the gonzo noir of The Big Lebowski, which has slowly become the Coen Brothers’ most beloved film, no matter how critics feel about that*. Some of the same viewers who would have asked for their money back after Miller’s Crossing have seen Lebowski fifty times. Because it moves quickly and is the Coens’ most broadly comedic entry, I guess that makes sense. But at the same time, it shares the shaggy dog circularity and ultimate futility that the rest of their work does. The team behind the camera didn’t really change its style or make anything more accessible to tell the Dude’s story. (In one of their most obvious homages, they basically updated the plot of The Big Sleep.)
Like most Coen protagonists, the Dude doesn’t succeed. He doesn’t find Bunny. He doesn’t get to keep the million dollars. His buddy dies, his car gets trashed, and he never finds a job. Just as he did in college or the Speed of Sound tour, he underachieves.
Lots of memorable characters fail though—Rocky Balboa, Jake Gittes, Atticus Finch, Charles Foster Kane—so it doesn’t seem as if that alone would make the Dude so enduring. And if lots of characters fail, then what makes the Dude “a man for his time and place,” one “who fits right in there”? Because there are also characters more emblematic of their times and places. (#2 and #1 on this list will be.)
I think the answer to that is that El Duderino—“if you’re not into the whole brevity thing”—is true to himself in every way. Take, for example, the way he dresses: the all-over print shorts, the v-neck white tees, the jellies. GQ would have a field day with him* if it weren’t for that caveat invoked by any fashion guru: be yourself. You couldn’t pull off that poncho, but the Dude can. And his ownership of his ethos (to use a word the film loves) not only excuses his shortcomings, it empowers them. He really doesn’t care what happens.
That isn’t to say that the Dude believes in nothing. He resents the nihilists in the film because he does have passion. It’s just that his passions—White Russians, bowling, driving around—are the simple pleasures that more ambitious people don’t appreciate.
It’s pretty comforting to be with someone incapable of feeling embarrassed. We never pity the Dude because he doesn’t pity himself. And we don’t blame him for his failures because, by the end of the film, we see them as he does: inevitable, objective changes. Strikes and gutters. One of the first images of the film is a tumbleweed dissolving from the organic desert landscape into an overhead shot of the L.A. freeway. That might not be what was supposed to happen to the Old West, but it did happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s telling that the Dude’s a pacifist, and his foil, Walter, is always lamenting the spilt milk of Vietnam, the textbook, irretrievable American failure.
Thus, if “aggression will not stand” and “fuck it is your answer for everything,” then Jeff Lebowski really is the embodiment of your brand of existentialism. Relinquishing control of your life is its own kind of control, and that’s a difficult idea to get across while also having a great time for 117 minutes.
We love the Dude because he embodies, effortlessly, a peaceful, fluid way of life in the face of people who are literally and figuratively paralyzed. So when the Dude famously says that he “abides,” the word choice is important. He doesn’t “remain” or “continue” or “acquiesce,” since those are intransitive verbs. Even if he doesn’t finish the sentence, he has to abide by something, and that something is his own transcendent, all-embracing spirit.
*- Initially, they were pretty ambivalent about it. The Big Lebowski is the definition of a movie that found its audience slowly. When it came out, critics were irritated that it wasn’t Fargo 2: Stay Frosty.
*- For all I know GQ might love Lebowski’s fashion. Aztec prints are on trend.
Got this from Facebook. This mother doesn’t play, LOL I can dig it.
LMAO! Shut her life down!
BUT HER MOUTH OMFGGGG LOLOLOL
she was in mid sob when her mom took this. The ether was strong
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