The Dude Abides

Sometimes there's a man, I won't say a hero...



... a man who is just trying to be himself ...



... but sometimes things don't go as planned ...



... in fact, sometimes they get worse...



... and sometimes even worse ...



You try to keep a sense of humour, a sense of identity...



... but sometimes things seem to just keep repeating themselves, over and over, going nowhere ...



... sometimes the competition sometimes seems unbeatable...



... and sometimes even the seemingly good things in life are not what they appear...



Sometimes you wonder if you are the only one who even gives a shit...



And so, sometimes, you just gotta be yourself, and keep doing the best you can.



In your own unique way.

Of course.

And now....

A BONUS FEATURE FOR REGULAR GANDHI READERS:

Not many people (I am thinking nobody?) have ever focused on the political theme of this great cult classic movie. But I will give it a try, using the above vids, my own memory, and this Wikipedia plot synopsis as a guide...

In the movie, there's a scene at the start where George H.W. Bush says "This aggression will not stand". Saddam has just invaded Kuwait. Then The Dude says "this aggression will not stand" when bad guys pee on his rug. So there's the movie's basic analogy: the US Everyman Dude's space has been invaded, and his rug is Kuwait. But who is Saddam? And why did he invade?

That's where things get interesting.

The bad guys pee-ed on the wrong guy's rug. They were really after someone else: a wheelchair-bound US millionaire. Saddam pissed on Kuwait, the little US rug in the Middle East which "really pulled together the room" of the USA's petrol-addicted economy. But who was Saddam really trying to piss on? The ordinary citizens of the USA, who got so very upset, so upset that they went on the warpath? Or the US government and their Big Oil supporters?

Of course, from Saddam's perspective, US Big Oil might easily be confused with the US government and/or the US people, just as The Dude is easily confused with a millionaire of the same name.

So just as The Dude is forced to go and resolve this dilemma himself, in order to maintain his much-loved lifestyle, it was the US people - by the force of public opinion, overwhelmingly, but by soldiers in particular, and their families (cf. the Dude's friend who pulls a gun) - who had to go and confront Saddam, and drive him out of Kuwait.

The invasion of Kuwait wasn't really their problem, but they knew they were going to be affected by it. Just like The Dude.

The pretext for the invasion of the Dude's privacy was that the Big Lebowski's wife had been kidnapped. Lebowski's goons mistakenly thought The Dude did it. But in fact it was the Nihilists. In fact, the wife might even have helped them fake the whole thing! Who knows? Mystery upon mystery...

I'll leave it to my thousands of regular commenters to unravel the minor plot details, but I am happy to stand my this high-level synopsis of the plot. No doubt the Coen Brothers manipulated subplots to fit the overall plot dynamics, but I think this is a credible version of what basically inspired the script.

Over to you...