The Big Lebowski
Pleasure can be a form of dissidence, as shown by this cycle, opening up this new year with a playful and impertinent philosophical tone. The modern heirs of Diogenes, the tramp Boudu and the punks of Not Dead dynamite the bourgeois order or the consumer society. Very Happy Alexander and The Big Lebowski make a few enemies by establishing the pleasures of laziness as an art of living. Children rebel against their school's authority figures in the libertarian Zero for Conduct, while Ferris Bueller prefers to play hooky to discover the world in a different way. In Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude, life becomes a marvelous game of defying convention and death, while Mr. Chance in Being There becomes a political oracle by simply explaining how to cultivate his garden. The final word goes to the decadent intellectuals of The Decline of the American Empire and their dizzying introspection on the exhausting quest for happiness.
Jeff Lebowski, nicknamed the Dude, is a slacker who spends most of his time bowling with his friends Walter and Donny. One day, two criminals come to his house, threaten him and demand that he pay back the money his alleged wife owes to a man named Jackie Treehorn. The problem is that Jeff doesn't have a wife and has been mistaken for another Lebowski, who is actually a billionaire. In order to obtain compensation for what he has suffered, the Dude decides to seek out the rich Lebowski, which leads him into a series of adventures.
Coen brothers
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, collectively known as the Coen brothers, are an American filmmaking duo. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). Those last three films have been ranked in the BBC's 2016 poll of the greatest motion pictures since 2000. In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Fargo among the 100 greatest American movies ever made. Many of their films are distinctly American, often examining the culture of the American South and American West in both modern and historical contexts.
