“Calmer than you are”: the scene that defines the brilliance of the Coen brothers
It’s one magnificent scene of many in The Big Lebowski: Walter Sobchak is sitting in the driver’s seat of his vehicle uttering to The Dude, “I’m calmer than you are,” moments after pulling a pistol on Smokey, a rival bowler down at the lanes. This single comic vignette contains everything that defines the Coen brothers’ mastery of moviemaking. It is one casually perfect minute of cinema that unspools utterly effortlessly.
There are several underpinning elements of the brilliance, one of which is the strength of fully formed characters and the dynamics between them. If you ask a cinephile to name the calmest movie character in history, there is a solid chance that a slew of them might opt for The Dude. The Zen-like protagonist even has a pacified religion crafted in his honour, but in that moment, Walter is calmer.
In fact, despite our lasting impression of The Dude being one of pure laidback equanimity, there are several moments throughout the film where he is anything but cool, calm and collected. He’s enraged, hysterical and downbeat. Why wouldn’t he be? The premise precludes calmness in plenty of moments; it would be unrealistic for even Buddha himself to remain chill in the midst of such disastrous stresses. Nevertheless, lesser filmmakers might be perturbed by the fact their ‘Counterculture Jesus’ was losing his calm and nix those comical moments of earnest humanity.
However, the Coen brothers are so confident in the fact that their character is fully formed enough for them to allow him to be human. He’s not a ‘concept’ merely propelling the story or framing a self-indulgent ‘cool’ shot; he’s a rare LA hero no doubt scuttling about in the hills this very moment. They didn’t even enforce a wardrobe on Jeff Bridges; he could largely wear what he wanted during the shoot. There was enough depth on the page and in pre-production discussions for him to easily gauge the sartorial ways of his humble Dude.
The same can be said for Walter—it is ineffably comical when he’s ranting and raving. His presence electrifies the screen in those big moments. Once again, lesser filmmakers might have kept him at this pace throughout to sustain the laughs – perhaps dropping in a sentimental moment of abated anger in the final throes for the sake of a soppy old ‘arc’ – but the Coen brothers avoid such typical tropes and imbue Walter with potentially more unknowable depth than any character in big-screen history.
So, he is almost inexplicably calm in the moments after he threatens to gun down an associate over a minor bowling violation; he’s even waxing lyrical about the virtues of pacifism within a system where the state holds the monopoly on violence, and it conjures a different type of laugh—it poses different types of questions.
However, the whole thing is not just beautiful because of its naturalistic charm. Of course, the two characters being oddly exasperated and yet somehow comforted by each other in that moment says plenty of poetic things about friendship, but the Coens refused to be smug and sentimental about that rarified achievement. Never afraid of a set piece, they also embrace the cinema’s ability to craft a comic situation, and as the discussion about peace and lane pistols unfurls in the car, in the background, the police arrive at the bowling alley.
You might even miss it the first time you watch it, but it becomes clear with subsequent viewings that, naturally, someone has called the cops due to Walter’s deadly threat to Smokey. It’s also clearly not lost on the Coens that the gag isn’t easy to spot, out-of-focus in the background, while an equally comical discussion unfurls in the foreground—now, the chat about calmness is beautifully juxtaposed by the frantic upheaval caused by the calmest man in the vicinity.
It is this combination of attention to thought-out and meaningful detail interspersed with genuine gags and story that makes the Coen brothers unique. The Big Lebowski is as serious and cognisant study of the development of Western civilisation as you’re ever likely to come across, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously to have it play out as a fitting farce—a perpetuation of the human comedy.
And it abides by the old Alfred Hitchcock mantra, ‘If it happens anywhere, it matters not,’ you can add to that, ‘If it happens to anyone, it doesn’t make that much, either.‘
