The Dude Who Abides

    The Big Lebowski, labeled a cult classic, is a comedy crime film written and directed by the Coen Brothers team.

    The film centers around a character known as The Dude. The Dude doesn't do much. When police ask him what he does for a living he responds that he's currently unemployed. He mostly lays in the bath tub and gets high. And he goes bowling.

 Jeff Bridges' character, who gets confused with a businessman also named Lebowski, is given a desire. He wants to fix his rug. It's one little want. It's one little need. The Dude is mostly propelled through the movie by the plans and schemes from business men to nihilist. But the promise of the rug, the one that pulled the room together, that keeps The Dude moving. It's relatable. Viewers are lazy. We don't want to do things.

    I added The Big Lebowski to my lookbook for a few different reasons. Firstly I love Roger Deakins and think he creates beautiful images out of simple character placements. Secondly, The Dude doesn't do a whole lot. Rather, like Andrew, things are mostly done to him. And for whatever reason this tires him out. Even though he's along for the ride he hates the journey. 

     Plus the Dude learns from his surroundings. He repeats the things other characters say. And he the solution to his problems come in a drug laced dreamed sequence. Which is an effective form of visual storytelling.

The Big Lebowski is a cult classic because each time you watch it there's a new joke. The high stakes create a lot of tension and juxtaposition of the calmness that often follows. The Coen Brothers show us a dramatic money hand off that failed. They ostensibly cut from John Goodman jumping out of a moving car to Steve Buscemi bowling. The Dude's enemies include nihilists and Jesus the bowler. The movie sets up and deceives are expectations, the hallmark of comedy.

    The Big Lebowski is about a man just trying to get vengeance for his rug. He's The Dude.

Sicario

I'm having a pretty difficult time making sense of Sicario. Coming fresh off the heels of my first Villeneuve film viewing (the weird, overly metaphorical yet somehow beautiful "Enemy") I had pretty high expectations going into the movie. It's got Roger Deakins behind the camera and Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio Del Toro in front of it, and I heard that the tension alone would make the 2 hour running time fly by.

Well. Here we are. Two hours later, and I'm not exactly sure what to think. All of those mentioned above did their job exceedingly well: Deakins killed it as always, and the performances of the three lead characters - specifically Blunt's - were riveting. The film definitely went by quickly, and it was tense throughout, and yet I can't help feeling that something is missing. Which is weird, because everywhere I look, all I can see are glowing reviews and praise being thrown at Villeneuve and Co. for making what some people are calling the best movie of the year (for example, check out Rolling Stone's review here and the AV Club's right here) So... am I wrong here? Am I missing something?

To make a long answer short; yes. Probably. The more I read about the film, the more I feel like it deserves an immediate second viewing. Specific complaints of mine, like the sense that I was never quite sure what was going on throughout the movie, were more or less put to rest when I realized that Blunt's character is supposed to be in the same shoes as the audience, with the lack of info supposedly pulling us along throughout. I'll buy that, I guess, and watching it again could take away that distraction of trying to figure out what the hell is going on and the constant worry that I'm missing something.

The more I think about it, the more that I realize that I just didn't particularly care about any of the characters (spoilers coming if you haven't seen Sicario). Sure, the scene where Blunt's character almost gets choked to death by the undercover hitman was suspenseful, but I never particularly cared if anything bad happened to her. Same goes for Brolin's and Del Toro's characters. They all did a fantastic job with the acting, don't get me wrong, but the movie more or less failed to connect with me on a personal level of any kind. In retrospect, I understand that the point was, as the AV Club puts it, to "squeeze the protagonist out of her own story." It was dark and futile, and every time you wanted to see Emily Blunt kick some male ass, she didn't. This wasn't a movie about the good guys winning, or even about the bad guys winning. Nobody won. Even the characters who managed to achieve their goals didn't win. I don't mind bleak movies, or even movies that subvert audience expectations, but with something this bleak, I at least like to be left with some sort of tidbit to ruminate on as I leave the theatre. In reality, I was kind of just frustrated.


Again, I feel like I'm just shitting on this movie, but it really did have some incredibly well executed scenes. The beginning had me 120% hooked, and might be one of the better intro scenes to any movie that I've seen in a long time. Roger Deakins filmed the whole thing beautifully, with what seemed to be a tendency to center his shots more so than I've seen him do in the past. All of the night vision/infrared scenes were really well done, and it's safe to say that the whole film was more or less a visual pleasure.

So. I don't know. I want with all my heart to say that this was a great movie, but right now I can't muster up the strength to call it anything more than decent. I'm not mad that I paid to see it, but at the same time, I wish I had enjoyed it just a teensy bit more. Denis Villeneuve has a history of making morally ambiguous films, and Sicario fails to break that trend. Maybe I'll feel different on a second viewing, but I don't exactly have high hopes.

The Dude Abides

I've waited an abnormally long time to watch The Big Lebowski. I saw my first Coen Brothers movies in 2007 when I had to watch O Brother Where Art Thou for an english class, and then again when No Country for Old Men came out and convinced me that Javier Bardem was the thing that nightmares are made of. I've seen - and enjoyed - a lot of their films, both the critically acclaimed (Fargo, True Grit) and the not so critically acclaimed (Burn After Reading). Recently, it's started to feel like Lebowski was intentionally avoiding me; my parents decided to rent it on Netflix when I was at school and the library hasn't had it every time that I've gone in to check. So I was thrilled when my roommate spontaneously sat me down earlier tonight and insisted that he rent it on his Xbox for us all to enjoy. The next two hours were perfect.

I had heard most of the famous quotes from the movie, but I really had no idea what I was in for. The plot itself is almost too complex to describe, especially after just one viewing. For those that haven't seen it, however, Jeff Bridges plays "the Dude," an unemployed stoner who loves bowling and just happens to get caught up in a kidnapping conspiracy. Knowing the Coen Brothers, I was expecting the film to be a fairly dark dramady, so I was surprised when I found myself laughing throughout the entire film. Lebowski is, through and through, a comedy.

I've always been fascinated by writing - it's something I'm hoping to make a career in - so Lebowski was really a treat for me. Lately, I've been working on ways to make dialogue seem really authentic, and this film was a breath of fresh air for me. The character of the Dude is just so incredibly natural and believable that while watching it, I was consistently torn between taking mental notes of things and just letting his Dudeness wash over me and take control. This is in part due to Bridges' Oscar nominated performance, but you have to give Joel and Ethan Coen so much credit for writing an incredibly believable sounding (while over-the-top in every way) screenplay.

On the other side of things, I was totally blown away with the cinematography and was both surprised and not at all surprised when I found out that it was the work of master DP Roger Deakins. Deakins has worked with the Coen Bros on numerous occasions (including Fargo and No Country For Old Men) and his style really shone through in Lebowski. Deakins used cuts sparingly, and this immediately reminded me of the video we watched in class the other day about how filmmakers are starting to believe that cuts are always necessary all the time. Deakins seems to abide by the old-school method of longer, lingering shots; these, along with some really cool POV shots (inside a bowling ball? Come on. That's awesome.) made for a film that was always visually interesting.

With an incredible supporting cast lead by John Goodman as the Dude's Vietnam war-ravaged, psychotic pal Walter ("shut the fuck up, Donny") The Big Lebowski holds up perfectly well, even on the 15th anniversary of its release. I loved everything about it; from the trippy bowling/porno sequence to the three nazi-nihilists to the rug, which really tied the room together. It was a great piece of comedy filmed with the utmost precision, something you rarely see. I'm excited to rewatch it and pick up a little more of the dense plot, but until then, I'm just going to sit back, chill, and let the dude abide.

Skyfall

Spoiler Alert!

Over break I ended up seeing the new James Bond film, Skyfall, and I loved everything about it. It is one of the best Bond films ever made in my opinion. I thought their locations and production design were amazing. The whole scene with the abandoned island and then Bond's old home were the perfect locations. They showed the desolation that was needed for those scenes. Besides that, the cinematography was great. Roger Deakins is such an experienced cinematographer having shot other films such as No Country for Old Men, True Grit, The Shawshank Redemption, and now Skyfall. The only thing that stopped this film from being perfect I think is one scene towards the beginning when Bond shows up in M's office and Deakins' goes handheld I assume in order to show disarray and confusion, but I really didn't like the way he did it. He tilted off to the side and it didn't look like a standard handheld shot. That is the only flaw that I noticed watching this film. If you guys haven't seen it yet, it's definitely worth a trip to the theater.