The Big Lebowski 

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Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore

My heroes, the Coen brothers You make a movie like "Barton Fink" and "Miller's Crossing," and you get held to a standard that may seem impossible to keep up over the years. The Coen brothers are the reigning brood of surrealism; progenitors of their own, richly-storyboarded, intensely visual fantasies grounded in a sort of blue-collar sarcasm. They also created my favorite comedy of all time, the transcendent "Raising Arizona," their 1986 comedy that made me move to Hollywood.

So it's impossible to go into "The Big Lebowski" without being duly armed with your love or loathing for the Coens, but guess what? They don't care. Like all visonaries, they are stubbornly married to their fantasies and fantastical ideas, even daring the audience to think "they've gone too far with this one." Such is the case with "Lebowksi," and for about an hour and a half, it's about the best cinematic acid flashback you're going to have this season.

Jeff Bridges stars as Jeff Lebowski, a laconic bowler with a path-of-least-resistance way of thinking, walking and talking. Called "The Dude" by his league bowling team (a gigantically wonderful John Goodman and a hilariously understated Steve Buscemi), he is mistaken for the OTHER Jeffrey Lebowski, a paralyzed, elder millionaire whose daughter has been "kidnapped" and held for ransom. When some goons come and pee on his rug ("that rug really held the room together," he laments) the Dude Lebowski goes to see the Big Lebowski, and the two end up entwined in the silliest murder-ransom-kidnapping scheme this side of "Ruthless People."

The story is maze-like and hard to follow, but the plot is largely secondary. What is more fascinating is The Dude's ethos, a stream-of-consciousness Van Gogh landscape—ruled by white russians, Bob Dylan and the 10th-frame strike. His dreams are the best part of the movie, careening through the Los Angeles skies, bowling with Roman Goddesses, floating amongst the stars. His dreams aren't so much an escape; they are a visual manifestation of the utter Coolness of his life. He's just as much at home in his subconscious as he is at the convenience store. Not since Hi in "Raising Arizona" has a Coen Everyman taken on such universal proportion.

True, the film's tightrope act falters in the third act; there is an inexplicable loss of energy in the last fifteen minutes that belies the film's promise. But with an ensemble cast that provides the kind of dialogue that probably kept Salvador Dali alive for so long—and a keenness of vision that ranks right up there with the Coen's woefully-underrated "Hudsucker Proxy," this movie is a wonderfully weird joyride well worth taking.

—Ian Williams

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