The Big Lebowski is a very complicated case, you know, a lot of ins, lot of outs, lot of what-have-you’s. Regardless of your drug regimen, there’s no shame in struggling to make sense of all strands you’re keeping in your head after watching it.
The Coen Brothers‘s 1998 cult classic demands a rewatch — and, honestly, that dream sequence deserves to be seen on a big screen — so take comfort in the fact it’ll be back in cinemas from 24th September 2018 to celebrate its 20th Anniversary.
A Raymond Chandler mystery shrouded in a haze of pot smoke, a pulp mystery with sentences removed at random, a two-fisted crime tale where the detective is a half-cut hippy, The Big Lebowski was a box office failure at the time of its original release, and critics struggled to make heads or tails of its purposefully circular, absurdist plot or larger-than-life characters.
Since then it’s undergone…something of a revaluation, to put it mildly. As so often happens with films misunderstood in their time, The Big Lebowski has accumulated a significant cult following since, including an annual Lebowski Fest in LA, books collecting The Dude’s slacker Zen koans, and a mooted sequel focusing on John Tutturo‘s Jesus I still can’t quite believe is happening.
Watching it today, it remains a bold and bizarre movie, with a frankly ludicrous cast (Jeff Bridges! John Goodman! Julianne Moore! Philip Seymour Hoffman! Tara…Reid?) and cracking soundtrack. Just don’t worry too much about trying to untangle the entire web; maybe just take a cue from the Nihilists there.
Whether you can quote every line from memory — and please, don’t do that in the theatre — or have never had the pleasure, and subsequently found this article to be mostly unintelligible, The Big Lebowski will will be released by Park Circus in selected international territories throughout 2018. You can find more info here.
