What filmmaking techniques does The Big Lebowski use?

CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in The Big Lebowski (1998): Picaresque Structure, Deadpan Absurdism, Non-Diegetic Insert, Fish-Out-of-Water Comedy and Callback Editing.

Who directed The Big Lebowski?

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen directed The Big Lebowski, released in 1998. CineCode also covers Blood Simple (1985), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Fargo (1996).

What films are similar to The Big Lebowski?

Films that share techniques with The Big Lebowski include Bananas (1971), Back to the Future (1985), Some Like It Hot (1959), Catch Me If You Can (2002).

Crime · Comedy

The Big Lebowski

Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1998

Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski is an unemployed bowler who gets mistaken for a millionaire with the same name. He is pulled into a kidnapping scheme, a ransom drop and a string of increasingly surreal run-ins with nihilists, pornographers and Vietnam veterans. The Coen Brothers use a crime story to carry the most relaxed piece of philosophy in American cinema.

3 Narrative 2 Editing

At a glance

The Big Lebowski is a 1998 crime and comedy film directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (3 narrative and 2 editing), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Bananas uses several of the same techniques.

Narrative

Picaresque Structure

Telling the story as a loose string of separate adventures, often following a low-status hero through different levels of society. With no single plot, the episodes add up to a portrait of a world.

How this film uses it

The plot pushes the Dude around. He can't understand the forces behind it and doesn't much want to. He meets the Big Lebowski, Maude, the nihilists and Jackie Treehorn, and each meeting is a stop on a picaresque journey, a loose string of adventures. Its real subject is how calm the Dude stays in the face of everything.

Where to see it

The Dude's series of meetings with the various parties to the kidnapping. Each one is a new social world that he runs into and politely survives. The string of episodes turns Los Angeles into the true subject of the film.

Narrative

Deadpan Absurdism

Showing extreme, violent or surreal events while the characters react as if nothing unusual is happening. That mismatch is funny and unsettling at the same time.

How this film uses it

The Coens treat kidnapping, extortion, murder and nihilism in the same tone as bowling league disputes and White Russian recipes. The Dude reacts to every disaster as if it were a mild inconvenience. That deadpan gap between the event and the reaction is pretty much all of the film's comedy and philosophy.

Where to see it

The thugs who break into the Dude's home. One urinates on his rug, and they leave when they realize they have the wrong man. The disaster is pitched at the level of a small household annoyance. That deadpan tone tells you how the film's comedy will work.

Editing

Non-Diegetic Insert

Cutting to an image from outside the story's time and place, such as a memory, fantasy or symbol. It shows what a character feels or comments on the scene.

How this film uses it

The Dude's fantasy sequences are the Busby Berkeley musical number and the Viking bowling dream. They are elaborate inserts that sit outside the story's real world. They show his unconscious desires and fears in a visual style that has nothing to do with the film's realistic surface. They are his buried urges turned into images.

Where to see it

The Busby Berkeley bowling fantasy. The insert shows the Dude's inner life on the grandest possible scale. The dream sequence works as a comic self-portrait.

Narrative

Fish-Out-of-Water Comedy

Dropping a character into a world whose social rules they don't understand. The comedy, and some insight too, comes from the constant mismatch between them and everyone around them.

How this film uses it

The Dude is completely unequipped for the world of wealth, crime and nihilism that he wanders into. The comedy comes from his refusal to get equipped. In every setting, he responds by being exactly himself. He is a fish that declines to admit it is out of water.

Where to see it

The Dude's meeting with the Big Lebowski. You have the unemployed bowler in the millionaire's mansion. The gap in class and culture is funny because the Dude totally fails to be impressed.

Editing

Callback Editing

Bringing back an earlier image, line, location or piece of staging later in the film, often with the situation reversed. You enjoy recognizing it, and the comparison adds meaning.

How this film uses it

The rug, the White Russians, the bowling alley and Walter's Vietnam are each set up and then brought back, and they mean more each time. The film moves in circles, and these callbacks do more than move the plot along. That is, they are how the Coens show that the Dude's world is self-contained, complete and always returning to itself.

Where to see it

The rug callbacks. The film keeps coming back to the incident that started the story. The rug gathers importance along the way until it becomes the film's main joke and main idea.

Questions

The Big Lebowski: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does The Big Lebowski use?: CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in The Big Lebowski (1998): Picaresque Structure, Deadpan Absurdism, Non-Diegetic Insert, Fish-Out-of-Water Comedy and Callback Editing.
Who directed The Big Lebowski?: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen directed The Big Lebowski, released in 1998. CineCode also covers Blood Simple (1985), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Fargo (1996).
What films are similar to The Big Lebowski?: Films that share techniques with The Big Lebowski include Bananas (1971), Back to the Future (1985), Some Like It Hot (1959), Catch Me If You Can (2002).

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