The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen · a film · 1998 · about 117 minutes
Mode
Comic crime film told as a tall tale; the private-eye story with its detective replaced by a man who will not look for anything, bound to Western narration, the buddy picture, the musical number and stoner comedy
Mythos
The quest whose labyrinth has an empty centre; the man who abides while everything around him strives; the holy fool, the false father, the shield-brother who is also a danger, the innocent who dies unheard; the cowboy’s voice that tells the tale
Phase
A few weeks of early 1991, framed by a stranger’s narration at either end; a case that grows larger at each lead and collapses, set between the rounds of a bowling league, with two dreams standing apart from it; the hero ending where he began
Presentation
Feature film in colour, about 117 minutes, in English; the theatrical cut, the only one; Roger Deakins’s photography, Carter Burwell’s score with songs chosen with T Bone Burnett, editing under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes with Tricia Cooke
Register
From a cowboy’s musing over a sarsaparilla to an ear bitten off in a dark car park; a cheque for 69 cents under a president’s face, and a dead friend’s ashes in a coffee can blown back over the mourner
Scale
Three bowlers, two Lebowskis, a city by its classes from Venice to Pasadena and Malibu, a war on every television
Governing Proposition
A man in Venice, Los Angeles, who has no profession and calls himself the Dude has his rug soiled by men who came for the other Jeffrey Lebowski, a millionaire in Pasadena, and goes to the millionaire to be paid for it. He is drawn into a kidnapping that was never one, a ransom handed off in a bag of laundry, a severed toe, a stolen car and a band of nihilists, while his bowling league plays on. The wager is that a crime plot can be emptied at its centre and still carry a feature, and that a man who does almost nothing can stand as the one figure not lying in a city where every other man fights his private war over something as small as a rug.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film begins with a voice. A stranger, speaking like a cowboy, starts to tell the story of a man in Los Angeles, and while he talks a tumbleweed rolls out of the desert, through the city and down to the Pacific, under the Sons of the Pioneers. The voice loses its thread more than once. The frame is set before anything has happened: what follows is a tall tale told at a bar, and its looseness will be the teller’s and the place’s as much as the hero’s.
The hero is Jeffrey Lebowski, played by Jeff Bridges, who calls himself the Dude. It is early 1991, and the war in the Gulf is on every television. In a supermarket he writes a cheque for 69 cents while President Bush, on the screen above the counter, says the aggression will not stand. At his bungalow in Venice two men who have come for a millionaire of the same name take him for the other and soil his rug. The Dude’s claim on that rug, which “tied the room together”, is the whole of the quest the film will give him.
The brothers wrote it together; Joel Coen took the directing credit and Ethan Coen the producing one. Working Title made it and Gramercy Pictures released it. It was first shown at Sundance in January 1998 and opened in the United States that March. Roger Deakins photographed it, Carter Burwell wrote the score and the songs were chosen with T Bone Burnett; the editing is credited to Roderick Jaynes, the brothers’ shared pseudonym, with Tricia Cooke; Rick Heinrichs designed the production and Mary Zophres the costumes.
Movement II
The Dude goes to Pasadena to see the other Lebowski, played by David Huddleston, a man in a wheelchair who receives him under his own portrait among the trophies of a life of achievement. The millionaire preaches self-reliance, sneers at the Dude’s past as a radical of the 1960s, and dismisses his generation: “The bums lost.” The film has given him its first argument in images: a hollow winner in a cold mansion, and a loser who will not be shamed.
Then the millionaire’s young wife, Bunny, played by Tara Reid, is said to have been kidnapped, and the Dude is engaged through the millionaire’s assistant, Brandt, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, to carry the ransom. He borrows the president’s words to say the thing will not stand, and the phrase passes from a war to a rug as easily as it passed from a speech to a supermarket. Everyone in the film borrows a grandeur in this way, and the Dude is the only one who hears how it sounds.
The detective story of Chandler’s Los Angeles is all here: the rich old man, the missing young wife, a pornographer in Malibu, the police who ask after a stolen car. But the man at its centre will not look for anything. Each lead he is handed opens a larger story than the one before, and each will collapse. Between them the film returns to the bowling alley, where nothing changes but the league’s draw.
Movement III
The alley belongs to the Dude, Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman, and Donny, played by Steve Buscemi. Walter is a veteran of Vietnam who fights the war again across the lanes: when a player’s toe crosses the foul line he draws a pistol and tells him to mark it zero. He keeps the Sabbath of a faith he adopted for a wife who has divorced him, and will not bowl on it. Donny’s questions are cut off, and he is told he is “out of your element”. Goodman takes Walter from reason to fury inside one sentence; Buscemi makes much of a part that is one interruption repeated.
Walter takes over the ransom drop. He swaps the money for a bag of his own laundry, his ringer, and the handoff fails. The Dude’s car is stolen with his Creedence tapes in it; a severed toe arrives as proof of the kidnapping, and the polish on its nail tells against it; homework left in the recovered car leads the two men to a boy in the Valley, Larry Sellers, and to nothing. Jesus Quintana, played by John Turturro, a rival bowler who licks his ball, has two scenes the plot could do without.
Maude Lebowski, the millionaire’s daughter, played by Julianne Moore, makes art that is a pose and has a plan for a child. In the Dude’s first dream he flies over Los Angeles after her as she rides away on his rug. The dream is high and funny, and it stands apart from the case; it is the film’s first sign that its most visibly made passages will bear the least of its weight.
Movement IV
In Malibu the pornographer Jackie Treehorn, played by Ben Gazzara, talks to the Dude about the new technology, and the second dream follows, staged as a musical of the 1930s to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition: the Dude, in a repairman’s suit, sails between a line of showgirls’ legs. It is the furthest the film rises on invention alone, and it rises on delight rather than on terror or grandeur.
Then the case falls in. There was no kidnapping. The briefcase held laundry. The millionaire has no money of his own; he lives on his late wife’s fortune and has been taking from his own charity. Maude’s child is a plan. Every larger story the Dude was handed has turned out to be smaller than the rug.
The film’s disclosure is complete without anyone stating it. In an America that has just won a war on television, every man fights his own over something small: the millionaire his self-reliance, Walter his Vietnam, the nihilists their creed, which turns out to be money. Against them the Dude, who has done almost nothing, is the only one who has not lied. The film endorses him more than it examines him, and that is the limit of what it finds.
Movement V
In a dark car park outside the alley the nihilists in black, led by Uli, played by Peter Stormare, come for money that never existed. Walter fights them and bites off an ear. When it is over, Donny dies. The film has kept the innocent who is never heard at its edge all along, and his death is the one event its comic law cannot wholly take in. It half admits as much.
Donny’s ashes come in a Folgers can. Walter begins a eulogy and turns it into a speech about Vietnam, then shakes out the can, and the wind blows the ashes back over the Dude. After it the two men embrace. Laughter and grief meet here and nowhere else in the film, and the scene comes nearest of anything in it to a height that is not only comic.
The Stranger, played by Sam Elliott, is at the bar again with a sarsaparilla, and meets the Dude there. Then he turns to close the tale, and his last address says it for him: “The Dude abides.” The film had a modest first run; the cult that grew after it, with screenings, a festival every year in its name and a mock religion, made the abiding man a figure the culture adopted. What lasts is the one law of the whole: every man in this city acts in a story too large for him, and only the man who does not act survives his.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on structure, under a wager that the plot has no centre: the kidnapping was never one, the briefcase held Walter’s laundry, the millionaire is broke, and the Dude ends where he began. Under that wager the plants are paid with care. The rug is the cause and the last thing missing; the Creedence tapes go with the car; the homework left in the car leads to Larry Sellers; Bunny’s toenail polish undoes the severed toe; Walter’s ringer and his Shabbos rule each pay twice. Donny’s death, the bowling refrains and the Stranger carry the theme and could not go. Held below the top by what is only loose: Jesus Quintana’s two scenes, Knox Harrington’s giggle, the cab driver and the doctor could go without loss to the argument.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and the film shows it more than it says it: in an America that has just won a war on television, every man’s war is fought over a rug. The millionaire who preaches self-reliance lives on his late wife’s money and takes from his own charity; Walter re-fights Vietnam in a bowling league and keeps a faith adopted for a wife who divorced him; the nihilists want money; Maude’s art is a pose and her child a plan. Image carries it: Bush on the screen as the Dude writes a cheque for 69 cents, the trophies and the portrait in Pasadena. Against them the Dude does almost nothing and is the only one not lying. Held below the gate because the disclosure is a temper more than an argument, the Dude is endorsed rather than examined, and the grief at Donny’s death is stated more than opened.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The register is comic, and the elevation is the comic kind, transport through excess and through grace in odd places. A tumbleweed rolls from the desert down to the Pacific under the Sons of the Pioneers; bowling balls travel the lanes in slow motion under the credits; in the first dream the Dude flies over Los Angeles after Maude on her rug; in the second, “Gutterballs”, he sails between showgirls’ legs in a repairman’s suit. The scattering of Donny’s ashes, blown back over the Dude, is the one point where laughter and grief meet. What holds the axis here: the height is of invention and delight rather than of terror, beauty or grandeur, and long stretches are conversation played for rhythm. A work that rises this often on comedy alone sits a tenth below the bar of 7.5.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The pattern that bears weight is built into the film, and it is an empty one. The detective quest of Chandler’s Los Angeles is taken over whole, with the rich old man in a wheelchair, the missing young wife and the pornographer, and given to a man who will not look for anything: the case is a labyrinth whose centre is empty. Against it the film builds the figure it is remembered by, the man who abides while everything around him strives. The Western enters through the Stranger, who places the Dude in his time and place and gives him the cowboy’s last word. Around them stand the holy fool, the false father, the shield-brother who is also a danger, and Donny, the innocent who dies without being heard. Held below the gate because the other myths are genre frames and jokes, evoked through pastiche more than made to bear load.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The inheritance is the private-eye story of Chandler, the noir and its revisions of the 1970s (Altman’s The Long Goodbye, 1973, had already set a drifting Marlowe loose in Los Angeles), the Western, the buddy picture and the Busby Berkeley musical. The turn is to put in the detective’s place a man with no profession, no curiosity and no desire beyond bowling and a White Russian, and to let the plot’s machinery run past him to nothing; and to bind noir, Western narration, musical number, the rhetoric of the war film and stoner comedy in one body. The stake was real: after Fargo (1996) had won a wide public, the brothers made a film whose plot dissolves and whose hero does nothing. Held below the gate because the swerve has a model in Altman, genre pastiche was the currency of the field in the 1990s, and the risk was cushioned by stars and a proven partnership.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Change the form and the film loses what it knows, that the world’s plots do not need you. The shaggy-dog structure is the instrument: each lead the Dude follows opens a larger story, kidnapping, embezzlement, pornography, nihilists, and each collapses, while the bowling alley returns between them like a refrain in which nothing changes but the league’s draw. The Stranger’s frame sets the whole as a tall tale told at a bar, so that the slackness is placed rather than accidental. Phrases pass from mouth to mouth, “will not stand” from Bush to the Dude, and make speech itself the medium of the joke about borrowed conviction. Held at the figure because much of the incident inside the collapsing plot has the form of the sketch, several scenes would play in another order, and the dreams sit apart from the form more than they serve it.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Twenty-eight years of evidence, of an unusual shape: an academic literature and a popular one, festivals, a mock religion, and a culture of quotation as dense as any film’s. The open questions are real and have stayed open. What is the Stranger, and why can he not finish a sentence? Is the Dude the film’s hero or its softest joke? What does the Gulf War frame ask of the plot? Is Walter its monster or its conscience, his Judaism a joke or the one tradition anyone in it keeps? Did anything happen at all? Return rewards rhythm, line and rhyme: the two Lebowskis, the two dreams, the two cheques. Held below the top because much return is to texture, quotation and performance rather than to new meaning, and the readings, though many, circle a small number of questions.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The field is the cinema of the 1990s, the decade of Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, the independent boom and the pastiche crime film. Intrinsic force: the film showed that a crime plot could be emptied and still carry a feature, that a passive hero could hold a comic film, and that genre pastiche could be warm rather than cool. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it is wide and of an unusual kind, a modest first run turned into one of the most durable popular institutions of its decade’s films, and a manner traced in later stoner comedy and in the drifting Los Angeles noir, Inherent Vice (2014) its clearest heir. Held below the gate because the film did not reorganise what film could do, and its reach into how films are made is narrower than its reach into how a film is lived with.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, across twenty-eight years. The form is whole: the film survives as released, in one cut, and later restorations and transfers repair it. Presence has been continuous and among the widest of its decade’s films: repertory and midnight screenings, a festival held every year in its name, television and every home format, and quotation in common speech. The cult grew after the first run rather than fading; fame is not counted, but a presence that has grown for a quarter of a century is. The surface is fixed to its moment in places, the Gulf War and a Los Angeles of pornographers and conceptual artists, but the film is about a man out of his moment, and the period reads as setting rather than fashion. Twenty-eight years, with the widest presence credited, take the figure.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Command of the medium, and the writing is its first department: the dialogue’s rhythm of repetition, interruption and borrowed phrase is among the most exact in American film comedy, and it is played to the beat. Deakins holds the bowling alley in warm colour and the Pasadena mansion in cold, and the shot from the ball’s point of view down the lane is an invention used once. Jeff Bridges builds the Dude from posture and voice without a false note; John Goodman’s Walter moves from reason to fury inside one sentence; Steve Buscemi does much with a part that is one repeated interruption. The editing lets scenes run and cuts on the comic stress. Held below the top because the dreams, the most visibly crafted passages, bear the least load, some supporting turns are sketches, and the case plot is assembled with less exactness than the dialogue that carries it.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the Stranger at the bar, in a cowboy’s voice, musing over a sarsaparilla on the Dude’s place in the scheme of things; and the nihilists in black on a dark car park, an ear bitten off, the ashes in a Folgers can. One law governs both: everyone in this Los Angeles is acting in a story too large for him, and only the man who does not act survives his. The millionaire’s rhetoric, Walter’s Vietnam, Maude’s art, Jackie Treehorn’s talk of new technology and the nihilists’ creed obey it, each a borrowed grandeur over a small appetite. The range is wide, from noir to musical to elegy, and the law holds across it. The strain is at the edges: Donny’s death is the one event the law cannot wholly absorb, and the film half admits it, and the two dreams follow a logic of their own.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Judged on what a comic film of about 117 minutes holds. It holds a city by its classes: the Venice bungalow, the Pasadena estate, the Malibu house, the Valley home of Larry Sellers, the bowling alley; money as inheritance, charity and ransom; the law as a sheriff and a pair of detectives who ask after the car; war twice, Vietnam in Walter and the Gulf on every television; the politics of the 1960s in the Dude’s past and the millionaire’s contempt; religion in Walter’s adopted Judaism; art and pornography as two markets; friendship and death. The bowling league ties them as the rug ties a room. What holds the axis lowest: each order is touched rather than entered, the women are functions of the plot, family is nearly absent, no one does any labour, and the one consciousness held from inside is a single man’s, and a deliberately slight one.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.1 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.6 and The Made at 8.5, then Pressure on Tradition at 8.3. A form whole in one cut whose presence has grown for a quarter of a century; a making whose first department is dialogue of exact rhythm, played to the beat by Bridges, Goodman and Buscemi under warm and cold photography; and a film that showed a crime plot could be emptied, a passive hero could hold a comedy and pastiche could be warm, with a reach that turned a modest first run into a durable institution.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.3: a city by its classes, money, law, two wars, religion, art and friendship are tied by a bowling league, but each is touched rather than entered, the women are functions of the plot, labour is absent, and the one consciousness held is deliberately slight. Above it, The Sublime at 7.4, a height of invention and delight that rises often on comedy and once on grief, and The Inevitable at 7.8, a plot whose plants are paid with care but whose digressions are in part only loose.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.3 falls two tenths short of it, The Archetypal Deep at 8.2 three tenths, The Unconcealment at 8.1 four tenths and The Swerve at 8.0 five tenths. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Sublime, 7.4, a tenth below 7.5; every other axis it covers stands at 7.8 or above. The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 8.1, from a sum of 96.6, in the band of Tier IV, short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of The Big Lebowski as first shown at Sundance in January 1998 and released in the United States by Gramercy Pictures that March, the theatrical cut of about 117 minutes, from the tumbleweed under the Stranger’s voice to his last words at the bar. There is one cut; no director’s or extended version is known, and later restorations and home editions bear on survival only. No print, screenplay or recording was consulted. Dialogue is quoted only in short lines of certain record. Figures and details that could not be verified, among them the exact date of release, the aspect ratio, the budget and the returns of the first run, the number of scenes and of the returns to the alley, the year the annual festival began, the titles of the academic literature and later honours, are not given.