The Films That Tied My Life Together

A universal experience. You watch a film for the first time. You learn the characters and their motivations, their goals. You gather the plot: what’s happened leading up to the film? What’s happening now? Can you envision the story continuing after it has ended? Maybe you like the film enough to watch it a second time. You’re watching it in a different context, so maybe you see the motivations differently. Perhaps it reveals more to you than it did on your first viewing. You know now that you really like this film.

So now maybe you watch it a third time. Maybe you watch it with three of your closest friends, friends whose opinions you trust more than anyone else in the world. The real litmus test. You await their thoughts once the credits roll. One friend was scrolling their phone as you look over in excitement during your favourite part. Another loves the film and thanks you endlessly for showing it to them. The third just doesn’t get it. What are you supposed to think of your new favourite film now? Shall you trust your judgement, or try and pick holes you didn’t want to see before? You’re invested now. You need validation.

You can have a relationship with a work of art in much the same way you can have a relationship with a person. If you substituted ‘meeting a person’ for ‘watching a film’ in those two opening paragraphs and allowed for analogical liberties, it could absolutely go the same way. I think the highest honour a filmmaker could get is for them to know that someone has cultivated a relationship with their film and has had their ideas and vision become an intrinsic part of their life.

Ethan and Joel Coen made both The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink, and so that is an honour I can give to them. I’ve seen these incredible films at different times in my life, with many different people. Some viewings were important and some weren’t. Some didn’t seem to be important at the time, but absolutely are now. What remains is are films of immense heart, wit and wisdom. What remains is The Dude.

Jeff Bridges plays the main character of The Big Lebowski, a jobless, goatee sporting, free spirit who finds pleasure in leisure. The Dude just wants to bowl and drink White Russians with his teammates Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi) and Walter Sobchak (John Goodman). This is genuinely all he wants to do, and everything that happens to him in his film is merely a hindrance. The Dude is put through the ringer throughout the two-hour runtime. The plot of The Big Lebowski is one long bad week for The Dude, one he didn’t ask for at all. His rug is pissed on, his car is stolen and destroyed beyond recognition, his bath time joint is disrupted by Swedish nihilists throwing a marmot in the water — and yet none of that gets him too down. He is dragged into a convoluted conspiracy without really knowing why. Nor does he really care.

I wish I could vividly recall the first time watching this film. It’s a huge regret of mine that I can’t. I know it was around my 16th birthday, and I know it was with my family, but the truth is I can’t remember more than not understanding why my mother was so insistent we watch The Big Lebowski as a family. My relationship with the film was off to a rocky start. The loose threads of plot I couldn’t tie together were coupled with jokes and references I didn’t get, my confusion compounded by my entire family in hysterics. And the bigger truth is I know why I didn’t understand it, as much as I wanted to. Those were the years I was very much on autopilot — so worried about the next day I couldn’t focus my thoughts on the present. I found it very hard to appreciate art. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time and so I’m very grateful for the perspective I’ve earned since then, which has made it possible to realise this.

My second viewing of The Big Lebowski stuck. I was 19. I’d lived more. I’d left England, gone to college, learned to appreciate life and to appreciate films that appreciate life a little more. Back in England it was a cold December night, and I was out sitting in a damp, dimly lit park with my friends Tom and Josh. We’d snuck out to smoke a joint. The topic of films we’d watched recently came about, and Josh started raving about The Big Lebowski. I thought back to my lukewarm reaction to it and confessed my ambivalence, but Josh was someone whose opinion about film I trusted more than most.

“We should watch it! We should watch it tonight.”

I volunteered my house. Fumbling with the keys, I opened the door — probably much louder than I thought I was being. We made it to the living room and started the film. Whether it was joint that got to me or the gained perspective and lease on life I had, it all clicked. I like to think it was the latter. This film made so much sense, spoke to me in countless ways, and this time put me in hysterics. Those loose threads that kept coming undone in my head before suddenly wove into my new favourite film. I’d grown as a person and could now see in me some of The Dude’s well-intended nonchalance, some of Donny’s innocence bordering on naivety, even some of Walter’s anxiety over people following the rules. My learned willingness to see beneath the surface meant I was ready for the next step in the relationship now.

Throughout the next three years, I’d spread the word about this film — hoping to do what Josh did for me and spark an affection for The Big Lebowski, one where you are safe in the knowledge that you can switch it on anytime, listen to the deft smack of bowling pins being toppled, listen to John Goodman’s incessant but hilarious faux-existential ranting, listen to that Sam Elliott narration over a cascading 90’s LA cityscape and know it’ll impact your life in a new way.

It’s a power you don’t want to use too often lest it lose its effect. The next time I’d access it was here at college on October 28th 2021. Midway through watching, I realised Halloween was coming up and I needed a costume. Why not be The Dude? Well, maybe because you’d spend the whole party bringing up a picture of him on your phone (you may be doing this now) to show whoever the next person who asks, “Who are you supposed to be?”

I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I donned the robe, the sunglasses and the sandals. I picked up the Kahlua, vodka and heavy cream. I screenshotted the picture on my phone to make it easier to show people. A couple people recognised me and that was all I needed. Turns out, more people showed up at our house than we anticipated — and the police arrived at our door. Hey man, this is a private residence.

As the sleeves of my robe brushed the citation I was begrudgingly signing, I felt strange. I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d ended up in with a court date dressed as The Dude, but I didn’t panic or argue. There was no way I could look past the irony of dressing like a character who unwittingly finds himself in ridiculous situations only for it to actually happen to me. It was passively and nonchalantly done, and while it would be a stretch too far to say I felt like The Dude, I do think that this film has influenced my worldview enough to impact how I handled the situation.

My connection with The Big Lebowski is just one of the many different types of relationships you can have with media. This one is long, has its strikes and has its gutters, has its ups and has it downs. But some of these relationships can be short. A one-night stand, maybe. This brings me to another Coen Brothers film: Barton Fink.

I’ve only seen Barton Fink once, and that is all I’ve needed to think of it as a brilliant piece of art and one that everyone should see. It follows a small-time 1940s New York playwright in the title role (John Turturro) as he is headhunted by a big Hollywood producer to start making big production films. Once he arrives, he grapples with writer’s block, an uncomfortable hotel, and eccentric neighbour Charlie Meadows (John Goodman).

I’ve discussed that the context you see a film in can greatly impact how you feel about it, and it was one night in early 2021 that framed Barton Fink as one of the most important films I’ve seen. I say early 2021 because at that time, all the days were blurring together. COVID has forced me away from my family at Christmas. I was stuck, alone in my dingy Harrisonburg apartment, too cold to go outside and enjoy the fleeting hours of daylight January provides. Films were my only respite. It was a low point for me, but I tried to make the best of it. With no other distractions, nothing else going on in my life, it provided me the right headspace to get the most out of this film on my first viewing.

The Coen Brothers wrote Barton Fink during a time they were struggling in the process of making Miller’s Crossing. This means that there are lots of references to writing in this film — the process, the point, the puzzle it presents. It totally flipped my take on what it means to be creative, to put your ideas and passions on a page.

To truly put across how much this one viewing has impacted me, I must take you back a little, about 11 years. I loved everything about reading and writing — it was my absolute favourite thing to do. I was good at it too! I wasn’t expecting or nor was I prepared for the brutal English school system to completely knock that thirst and simple pleasure of putting my ideas on paper out of me. It was a long time before I wrote anything out of sheer enjoyment again.

In 2021, I’d followed my passion for music and joined my college radio. They were looking for people to produce content for the magazine and I began writing again. Interviews, reviews, even designing crosswords. I could feel that enjoyment of words once again within me, the license to write freely a huge part in that spark.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Barton Fink after I’d finished it, and not just because I had nothing else to think about. It only took the one “meeting”, but I was in love. This was not like Lebowski, who played hard to get. The in-depth exploration of creativity in this film led me to chase this in my own life and set me on a path with more certainty. There is a theory I have since read about the film that all the noises that disturb Barton while he locks himself away in his hotel room are ones he makes later in the film. I believe this could be the Coen Brother’s way of muddling through and overcoming writer’s block. When I write, it’s often the ‘noises’ of potential sentences or ideas that cloud my thoughts and just seem unable to be put on the page. Seeing this metaphor within Barton Fink was very eye-opening and helped me visualise the abstract process of writing more.

I was ambling about majors at university, trying to find one that stuck. The rekindling of my fervour for writing was long overdue, and after seeing how rich the experience of writing could be through this film, I decided to be a writing major and have stuck with it since. I think of Barton Fink every writing class I go to, and every essay I write.

One quote, from a scene where Barton is trying to explain his writing process, kept replaying in my brain: “I gotta tell you, the life of the mind…there’s no roadmap for that territory…and exploring it can be painful.”

The phrase ‘life of the mind’ revealed a human truth to me. That’s what films are, what essays are, what communication is. The life of the mind. Animating the sum of your lived interactions, and your reaction to those interactions can be the most cathartic, life changing thing. When you write, you must carefully consider how outwardly you want to display your innermost sensibilities. Maybe I’m making it sound scarier than it is. Maybe Barton is right, that navigating the territory in your head is scary — and the best way to shake that fear is knowing the reward beats the risk.