Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

 

Fargo (1996)

 

The Big Lebowski (1998) **

A plethora of who’s who comprises the cast of this 1998 Coen Brothers comedy about a case of mistaken identity gone terribly awry.  The Big Lebowski is chock full of memorable performances and has a far-out plot loosely based on the 1939 Raymond Chandler novel, The Big Sleep (which was first made into a movie in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart as Detective Philip Marlowe). Like many early Coen Brothers’ films this was not a commercial success; however, over the years it has become a cult favorite. While I’m not a huge fan of this, I do admire the acting and the bizarre plot.

Jeff Bridges plays “The Dude” (AKA Jeffrey Lebowski), a white Russian-drinking and pot-smoking slacker who likes to bowl.  The Dude’s world becomes complicated when a porn kingpin named Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) sends his goons to the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski’s house looking for payment of Jeffrey’s wife Bunny’s (Tara Reid) debts. The thugs soon realize they have the wrong Lebowski, but not before one of them urinates on his rug. Why is this important?  Because after relaying this story to his bowling buddies one of them, a crazy Vietnam vet named Walter (John Goodman), convinces him that he should make the other Lebowski pay to have the rug cleaned. This is how The Dude meets the Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), a wheel-chaired millionaire married to a slutty trophy wife.  Soon after Bunny is kidnapped and The Dude is asked to serve as the bagman for the ransom. What ensues is one of the most peculiar story plots in the history of motion pictures—but what should you expect, it is the Coen Brothers after all.

What I like about most Coen Brothers’ films is that they are always unique in their own special way.  This one has a quirky hippie vibe—what with The Dude always smoking a doobie and Walter constantly referring to ‘Nam—but it also has a biting edge to it, especially when depicting the art world and nihilism.  Somehow these people from completely different social spectrums meet and create a chaos that is, well, rather paradoxically, a form of artistic nihilism.  While the story has some fat that could be trimmed (specifically the two appearances of Sam Elliott as “The Stranger”), overall most of the pieces of the messy plot come together in the end.

As for the acting, just about every character is memorably played by some of the finest actors in Hollywood today. However, there are three performances that standout above the rest.  First, John Turturro is virtually unrecognizable as Jesus, a bowling rival of The Dude’s team.  Playing a Latino with a heavy Cuban accent who went to prison for exposing himself to an eight-year-old girl, Turturro plays on every stereotype you can imagine.  Jesus’ clothes are way too tight, he is overtly sexual, and his machismo is beyond measure.  For such a small part, it turned out to be one of Turturro’s most memorable.

The second standout performance has to be Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski, the Big Lebowski’s estranged daughter.  When you make your entrance in an overhead harness completely nude you must have gusto.  Playing an avant-garde artist with no inhibitions, Moore makes you pay attention to every word that comes out of her mouth in a clipped, faux British accent.  Maude would be pretentious if she weren’t so damn serious!  Some of the words that come out of Moore’s mouth would sound so wrong if they weren’t delivered by an actress who knew how to play her part to the fullest.

Finally, while I know Bridges is the star of the movie, it is Goodman who is the standout.  I don’t know what it is, but he has a habit of stealing whatever film he is in—even as a co-star or in a cameo performance.  His Walter is the most memorable thing about The Big Lebowski. Extremely gifted when it comes to voice inflection, body language, and most definitely facial expressions, Goodman turns what otherwise would have been an irritating idiotic sidekick into an exasperating psychopathic wingman. Whether he is jumping out of a moving car or interrogating a teenage boy, or most memorably throwing a paralyzed man to the ground, Walter is outrageously believable.  For me, if there is one reason to watch The Big Lebowski it is Goodman—he is most assuredly not an amateur.

Overall, this is a typical Coen Brothers’ comedy: uniquely written and strongly acted. Other than a few standout performances and an unusual plot there is nothing that makes me want to watch The Big Lebowski over and over again.

True Grit (2010) **

True disappointment is more like it!  Three great actors and two Coen brothers would seem like a recipe for success, but something went wrong with True Grit (2010).  I suppose I am in the minority here, as I read many critics’ reviews that praised this Coen venture.  In addition, it garnered ten Academy Award nominations (at least it didn’t win any!). Now, it’s not like I am one of those rabid John Wayne fans who thought there was no way the 2010 version could compare to the 1969 one, because I didn’t think that was that good, either (though Wayne does give a fine performance).  No, I just found it an average, run-of-the-mill Hollywood picture—without the aliens and huge explosions.  That’s not to say there is anything wrong with average—I tell my students average is fine, as most people are “C” students—but with all the hype surrounding this film I expected more but got less.

An adaptation of the 1968 Charles Porter novel of the same name, the film is about one girl’s unyielding need for retribution for her father’s murder.  More mature than any fourteen year old I ever met, Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) wants to hunt down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and bring him to justice for killing his boss and her father.  She may be matter-of-fact and businesslike, but she lacks the necessary skills to venture into Indian Territory (this film is set way before the PC age) and apprehend him herself.  So, she hires a Deputy U.S. Marshall known for a shoot-first mentality and, well, true grit.  Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) might have true grit, but he’s also a drunk and unpleasant person.  Along the way they team up with (and occasionally break off from) Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), who is after Chaney for killing a Texas state senator.  What follows is a drawn out (literally) search of a half-witted, pseudo-psychopath, with a few side encounters with odd characters and reprehensible reprobates. 

The acting is passable to good. As usual, Brolin gives a strong performance in his very limited screen time.  In addition, this is one of Damon’s best roles in years.  The young Hailee Steinfeld was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, which I don’t understand, as she is clearly the focal point and star of this film.  It is difficult to believe that this was her first feature film, as she stood up well against three highly respected male stars. As for Bridges, who was nominated for Best Actor, I thought he hammed it up too much and made Rooster into a caricature.  Without a doubt, John Wayne’s Rooster is the more superior of the two.  The nuances that won Bridges the Oscar for his portrayal of Bad Blake in Crazy Heart (2009) are MIA—perhaps he had to top his award winning turn or was afraid that his career would end once people saw Tron: Legacy (2010).  Who knows? I just wasn’t into it.

I’m usually a fan of the Coen Brothers’ work, but they have a habit of making really good films (No Country for Old Men [2007], O Brother , Where Art Thou? [2001], and Fargo [1996]) and then making really average (and sometimes crappy) ones (Burn After Reading [2008] and The Ladykillers [2004]).  True Grit falls somewhere in between the good ones and the crappy ones.  It may have been their choice to have the characters speak in an exaggerated manner that irked me the most.  No one, not even back in the 1800s, spoke like that unless they were on the stage.  And, these characters are most certainly not on the stage—no matter how resolute their personal agendas. 

The one thing I truly enjoyed about the film were the scenes between Mattie and Colonel Stonehill (veteran television actor Dakin Matthews).  The true exasperation that the poor Colonel encounters at his business dealings with Mattie are funny and entertaining.  When he says, “I do not entertain hypotheticals. The world itself is vexing enough,” I couldn’t help but laugh.  Had the rest of the film been a bit more like these scenes I might have liked it better.