CTVA 215 Week 11 - The Big Lebowski (1998)

The Big Lebowski has all the hallmarks of a classic cult film. A film entirely on its own wavelength, half neo-noir and half stoner comedy, that doesn’t find success in its initial theatrical run but finds its audience in the decades following. It’s the perfect example of what people think of as “cult films.” This film in particular has had such an impact culturally that for years I didn’t even know it wasn’t a major success at first. The story of The Dude is told expertly through the near perfect direction and writing of the Coen Brothers, telling the story through a disorienting and absurd lens that really puts us in the perspective of the perpetually crossfaded Dude. So much work is done to capture the experience of living in Los Angeles as an over-the-hill hippie and getting way over your head in a convoluted scheme. It gives the film a unique and memorable tone that it does a fantastic job maintaining throughout its 2-hour runtime. 

What ultimately ties the film together for me is the incredible performances. This film has a ridiculously stacked cast, full of some of the greatest character actors of our time, firing on all cylinders and giving us some of the greatest comedic performances of all time. Jeff Bridges does an incredible job as The Dude maintaining the tone I discussed earlier, but he’s surrounded by incredible supporting performances as well. John Goodman is a force of nature as Walter Sobchak, going from calm and collected one second to enraged and projecting his PSTD onto everyone around him, he delivers some of the film’s best quotes and in my opinion gives its best performance. The rest of the film is populated with great characters, whether it’s Steve Buscemi’s bumbling and innocent Donny, Julianne Moore’s artistic and feminist Maude, or Philip Seymour Hoffman’s perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown Brandt, they all work together to give this film its unique identity. The Big Lebowski finds its success by striking such a specific tone and fully committing throughout the film, making it a notable piece of cult cinema and an all time great film comedy.