A personal reflection on the movie called the Big Lebowski.
First time watching The Big Lebowski, I was with someone much older and wiser than me. In the only night we were together, in a dreamlike state we watched this movie.
We were sitting on a couch and puffing puffs. As the occasion required, she the told me about the movie. I told her I hadn’t watched it. I said, “Let’s watch it now”. She said “..,now?” She put it on nonchalantly, with the air of someone who lets things work themselves out on their own. She said, “Even if we don’t finish watching it now, you’ll end up watching it on your own”.
After that brief one night encounter, I thought to myself, why did she tell me I would eventually end up finishing the movie on my own? I was kind of furious. How could she make such an absolute statement – almost as if I had no free will ?
And I did end up watching it.
And then I re-watched it. Many times.
Today I found out, what Walter says as his farewell to Donny, “Good night Sweet Prince”, is actually a quote from Shakespeare. Turns out this is what Horatio says after Hamlet dies. After his death, Hamlet’s good friend Horatio says goodbye to him and gives him one final farewell.
Good night sweet prince.
For a year in my life, I lived in a small house in an old and chaotic part of Istanbul. We lived in the house, me and my two closest friends at the time. One day, one friend was telling me about a play she once acted in on stage, and how much she admired the playwright of that play. We ended up discussing expressionist theatre afterwards, and as I was still under the heavy influence of Big Lebowski at the time, I just had to mention the one scene in the movie where they attend the landlord’s dance recital. And then after that when we were talking about pop art, and performance as a form of art, and the value of art being tied to the process it was created by, then I just had to tell my friend about Maude and how she paints. That was the first time when I was, “Wait a minute, it is all coming together”. The Big Lebowski really tied the whole thing together. I just realized how anything we talked about from that period would have a corresponding scene, a moment in the movie. The Vietnam war, the emergence of modern art, Capitalism, the bums that never lose, the hippies and the Far Out Man.
Sometimes there is a man…
He is just the man for his time and place………
In the movie, the characters are just thrown together. They appear on the screen with zero introduction. The plot doesn’t tie itself together. There is no causation. Nothing makes much sense. A man comes in and puts the Dude’s head into the toilet bow. He complains about a carpet, and realizing they got the wrong guy, they leave.
Why is there a cowboy in the movie?
We chase the white rabbit through wonderland. At first its the carpet. Then its Bunny Lebowski…
We are always chasing something. At least there is an overarching feeling of chase. We don’t really understand what it is we are chasing until we finish the movie. The first seeing does not leave us satisfied. We do not even enjoy getting confused, because it makes no sense.
As you watch it more and more, the details flesh themselves out.
Watching the Big Lebowski for the first time is like going on a journey.
Re-watching the Big Lebowski is like witnessing a monument, a monument to a time and place that is embodied in the Journey of the Dude.
Thus, it is a timeless monument, existing beyond time and space.
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