Mistaken identities have fucked up countless people and left them receiving the sharp end of one’s wrath which was meant for someone else. This confused charade has been going on for as long as we started to run out of unique names to call one another by and started to recycle old ones. The canon of human storytelling – in literature, painting and film alike – is wealthy in those strange tales of a person being confused for someone else and getting the beating for it, and those are the tales which rank quite highly in their scale of how compelling they can be. Us, the omniscient by-standers are quite aware of who is who, yet to see the parties involved botch and bungle up their tasks in such divine stupidity that the consequences land on someone else’s head is just as, if not more, entertaining than seeing the proper comeuppance ruled out to those who deserve it. The way I like to picture this is that a crowd is gathered to witness the execution of some criminal by firing squad. Because all the other officers are on holiday but one, the singular executioner must carry out the judgement. Our criminal is tied to a post, looking down the shiny and polished barrel of his impending death. The trigger is pulled but somehow the officer misses just by a hair and the bullet ricochets off something and hits one of the spectators square between the eyes. The spectacle-hooked crowd quickly disperses around the unfortunate soul who was just dealt the worst hand in this game of poker against the chaos that rules the universe, only to find that corpse bearing the same name as the one who’s name was actually written on the bullet. Well, the scales balance out, they came to watch someone die, and died someone did. The officer unties the criminal and lets him skip back home.
Ah, extreme exaggerations and nightmarishly comical situations, the sort which are commonplace in my head, they seem like the ravings of a sadistic psychopath on print. But the image is illustrated and you can tie yourself to wherever this rambling account of a film I watched last night which has been awaiting my eyes for a long time is going. I faintly recall watching The Big Lebowski (1998) when a world was in a very different mercury and my mind was in a completely different state to what it was last night, I was far too stoned to keep my eyes open and drifted slowly off like flotsam onto the shores of some lurid dream when I watched it those many years ago. Finding the film on Netflix once again last night after a long shift at work, I needed stupidity and comic relief in bucket fulls. So, with my body sinking deeper into my bed and a bar of caramel chocolate laying on my lap, I watched the film properly this time, it was a fantastic display of idiotic comedy, the unexpected surprises of things going wrong and of course mistaken identity leading to wonderfully terrible consequences.
I’m pretty sure most of you reading this swivel have already watched the film, but for those – like me – who’ve been leading their subterranean lives underneath some heavy rock, the general plot of the film runs with one Jeffery Lebowski, a lazy stoner who calls himself “The Dude” who gets mistaken for another Jeffery Lebowski, a millionaire philanthropist, when two thugs come for him to extort money out of him. Realising that they’ve got the wrong Lebowski, one of them piss on his rug which apparently holds the whole flat together, and that piss puddle trickles out into the events of the film. I shan’t put down the rest here for the risk of spoiling the plot, which I really don’t care about but it’s a pretext for laziness, is rather high.
I usually assign this portion of the review for the cinematography and the visual aspects of the film, because after all there mut be a method to this madness or else it all falls apart. There’s probably quite a lot to say about it and I’m certain that long essays have been written in articulate eloquent text about how rich in visual flavour this film is, I on the other hand only picked up on a small handful of it, whether it’s because my mind was totally zapped from work or because I’m losing my analytical abilities because of the slowly encroaching creep of brain damage one can tell little. The way I see it, the camerawork was simple yet effective, it made room for the comedy and the plot. Nonsense filigree isn’t needed. It would’ve tipped the balance wildly and the audience would be rather conflicted in what to pay attention to. That’s not to say that the film is completely devoid of all visual pleasure, that would be an outrageous statement which would get the person uttering it strung up and hung from the corner of some peaked roofed building. First and foremost, though the camera work serves it purpose as vehicle for the images, it is never bland and tasteless for the images our eyes meet are well crafted and well put together. There’s a certain gritty insouciant quality to the cinematography which matches the disposition of The Dude, it’s grainy and hard to pin down with flashes of craziness and level-headedness – much like the characters that surround him like Walter and Donny. The washed out, dirt-stained interiors of The Dude’s flat set against the neon hellscape of Los Angeles creates this duality of worlds which coalesce together in whatever pastimes and hobbies The Dude and other misfits of his kind choose to indulge themselves in. For me, the cinematography picks up pace to a breakneck visual stimulus once The Dude crosses paths with Jackie Treehorn, the millionaire porn producer. The debaucheries activities on his private beach with naked ladies bouncing from sheets propelled by the lust of men appearing in frame is a sight that makes the frame light up with the same frantic lust as those who are sending the girls flying up to see their boobs jiggle. Never stopping there, things become even more imaginative and surreal when The Dude gets his rink spiked with what I can only imagine is some pretty strong mescaline, sending him in some roman bowling dream sequence, only to be followed by red spandex demons chasing him with oversized scissors that will be used to remove his dick from his body.
I said earlier than the simplicity of the camerawork leaves enough space for the comedy, a perfect symbiosis of visual and verbal. Every twist and turn in the story reveals a brand new fuck up, a new problem to deal with which comes with an additional clue helping to overturn the previous one. At its heart, this film unfolds as wonderfully as a flower in spring, fertilised by cannabis infused compost. Every story beat, arranges a new problem which raises the stakes and pulls The Dude deeper into a conundrum which originally started off as just a “chinaman” pissing on his rug. Somehow watching the character development between The Dude and Walter, I got vibes which were redolent to The Eric Andre Show. Walter being the insane, loose cannon who realises his apoplectic paroxysm a bit too late, while The Dude being the surprisingly level-headed one for someone who have spent his perennial existence in a haze of weed smoke. The Dude’s problems are always complicated by the unnecessary actions of Walter, but when viewed with the power of retrospect, he doesn’t do any more harm than what is already dealt.
I can feel this review derailing with every sentence already, I think I’ve said enough to give the reader an accurate idea of what this film is about. My liquid breakfast of beer and wine doesn’t help with the perniciousness of this piece in the slightest but I’d be remised if I went back and began hacking away at sentences with the backspace button and rearranged the whole thing to make it look like it came out the mind of a lucid and straight-thinking square. Anyway, with the reputation this film has garnered for itself, that alone is worth watching it for, but on top of that, it’s a brilliant offering for the Brothers Coen.
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