Independent Cinema for Everyone

The Big Lewbowski – Open Air Cinema

A review from Ieuan Jones

Well it’s a sunny, balmy Thursday night, not unlike the sun as it sets over the old West in LA where Jeffrey Lebowski resides (and abides). All the dudes, dudettes, duders, and el duderinos (if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) of Plymouth and beyond have descended on the Royal William Yard. They’re forgoing a night out bowling, going through business papers, or hanging at the In-n-Out Burger on Camrose, in order to come and chill out on picnic rugs that really tie the Yard together. And why? Well, to watch an absolute solid gold classic – The Big Lebowski (1998) – where else? – but where it deserves to be seen, on the big screen. There was even a White Russian or three going round (careful, there’s a beverage here…) and maybe even something stronger in the air in tribute to the Dude himself. Far out, man.
What is it that makes the Coen brothers’ arguably most popular film endure after nearly two decades? Maybe it’s the phenomenal characters, the endlessly quotable screenplay, the twisty plot that makes as much sense as the average Jackie Treehorn production. Or maybe it’s because it shows how the whole human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself. All I know is I laughed as hard and as long as Karl Hungus in Logjammin’ (“you can only imagine where it goes from here…”) and I must have seen this movie in the hundreds by now, surely.
Not only do we get perhaps the perfect trio in the Dude, Walter and Donny at the epicentre of the madness. On top of that we get a group of nihilists, a video artist, a spinal, a Brother Seamus, a marmot, a pornographer (who, frankly, treats objects as women) and, ahem, Jesus to boot, making it truly the brainchild of Raymond Chandler if he hit the bongs pretty hard one night. Frankly, I did not watch my buddies die face down in the muck so that it could have turned out any other way.
Well, that just about does her, wraps her up. And as the credits roll and we all file out of the lanes chanting the dialogue into the night we are reminded (as if that needed doing) exactly why the Dude truly is the greatest – that is, after all, what we pay him for. And if you don’t agree, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

Ieuan Jones