Summary
Brandt tells the Dude that Lebowski wants him to act as the person to go and deliver the ransom money. "Why me, man?" the Dude asks, to which Brandt replies, "He believes the culprits might be the very people who soiled your rug and you are in a unique position to confirm or disconfirm that suspicion."
That night, a man clad in purple named Quintana bowls in one of the lanes of the bowling alley. He licks his pink ball before he bowls, sending the pink bowl spinning down the lane for a perfect strike. As Latin music plays, Quintana dances victoriously as the Dude, Donny, and Walter all stare at him disapprovingly. "That creep can roll, man," says the Dude, shaking his head, and Walter tells him that Quintana's a sex offender; "He did six months in Chino for exposing himself to an eight-year-old," Walter says.
The Dude triumphantly tells Walter that Lebowski gave him $20,000 to act as his courier, and pulls out a beeper that Brandt gave him. "She probably kidnapped herself," the Dude says, hypothesizing that Bunny set it up herself in order to con her husband out of more money. He tries to quote Lenin, but loses his train of thought halfway through his explanation. Walter is incensed about the possibility of Bunny staging her own kidnapping and the Dude tries to calm him down.
Quintana comes over and tells the group that he and his companion Liam are going to beat them in the finals. "Well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man," the Dude responds.
At home, the Dude lies on his new rug and listens to a recording of the Venice Beach bowling playoffs from 1987 on a cassette player. The sound is just pins falling and the Dude's eyes are closed in peace. When he opens them, two men and a woman are standing over him, and one of the men punches him in the face before he can respond.
As Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me" plays, we see the Dude flying through the air behind the woman, who is riding on his rug through the sky over Los Angeles. Suddenly, the Dude realizes he is holding a bowling ball, whose weight pulls him suddenly down to Earth. We then see him in miniature, standing on the ball return at the bowling alley, as a giant bowling ball comes rolling towards him.
When the Dude wakes up, he is on the floor in Lebowski's mansion, unsure of what happened. Brandt gives him detailed instructions for going and meeting the kidnappers. Brandt then hands the Dude a briefcase with the money and a portable phone and tells him to follow their instructions closely. "Her life is in your hands," the butler says, which makes the Dude anxious.
As Dude pulls into a parking lot, Walter jumps in and informs the Dude he's going to drive. He hands him a bag that contains "the ringer," which is just a briefcase filled with his dirty underwear, but the Dude is still confused. "I got to thinking, why should we settle for a measly fucking 20 grand...when we can keep the entire million?" Walter says. The Dude isn't convinced, when suddenly the phone rings. It's the man asking for the ransom, and Dude mistakenly alludes to the fact that he isn't alone, which angers the man on the other end.
The Dude tries to cover up his mistake by saying that he is coming with a driver, but the man hangs up before he can give his explanation. Growing hysterical, the Dude yells, "Her life was in our hands, man!" Walter tries to calm the Dude down when suddenly the phone rings again. The man on the other end, agrees that they will proceed, but warns Dude against trying any "funny stuff."
As they approach the meeting spot, Walter says they just have to get Bunny back before they hand over the ringer, saying that he will beat information about Bunny's location out of the men. Suddenly, the Dude gets another call, and the man on the other end tells the Dude to throw the bag of money out the window of the open car. "You're being watched," he says, and hangs up. As they approach the bridge, Walter wants to throw the ringer out the window, but the Dude is intent on throwing the briefcase of money.
Before the Dude can stop him, Walter throws the ringer out the window and tells Dude to grab the wheel, so he can roll out of the car, double back and beat some information out of the enemy. He motions to an Uzi in the backseat, before rolling out with it. As it hits the ground, the Uzi goes off on its own, firing at the Dude's car, which hits a pole. When a trio of motorcycles drive past and pick up the ringer, Dude jumps out of the car and runs towards them with the actual briefcase of money, but the motorcycles have already driven away. "Eh, fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling," Walter says.
At the bowling alley, Walter bowls while the Dude holds the portable phone, which rings nonstop. "What the fuck are we gonna tell Lebowski?" he says, but Walter has no ideas. When Donny runs over and tells his friends they have to bowl on Saturday, Walter is annoyed, because he can't play on Saturday—it's shabbos, the Jewish day of rest, and bowling is not allowed. "They're gonna kill that poor woman, what the fuck am I gonna tell Lebowski?!" Dude yells at Walter, who continues to ignore him.
Dude angrily leaves, with Walter and Donny following close behind. When they get outside, the Dude is alarmed to see that his car has been stolen and walks home.
At home, Dude reports his stolen car to two cops. "Was there anything of value in the car?" one of the cops asks, and Dude tells them there as a briefcase, but does not mention that it contained a million dollars. "My rug was also stolen," Dude adds, as his landline begins to ring. A woman's voice leaves a message; it's Maude Lebowski, who tells the Dude to call her when he gets the message and tells him she's the one who stole his rug. "Well, I guess we can close the file on that one," one of the cops says, smiling.
The Dude arrives at Maude Lebowski's apartment, an industrial loft with barely any furniture. At the end of the room, he finds an abstract painting, when suddenly Maude is flown in overhead on some wires and dapples some paint on a canvas from above. As she dismounts from the wires, he sees that she is naked. She puts on a robe and approaches him, saying, "My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal, which bothers some men."
Maude is Lebowski's daughter, and she takes issue with the fact that her father gave the Dude the rug, because it was a gift from her to her late mother. She then tells him that she knows something about Bunny's kidnapping. According to Maude, Bunny is a nymphomaniac, and as the Dude goes looking for some Kahlua in Maude's liquor cabinet, she turns on a pornographic film, starring Bunny and the man he saw floating in the pool that day at Lebowski's.
Analysis
Just when it seemed that the Dude was clear of the drama attached to the millionaire Lebowski, Lebowski calls him in to run a special errand for him and figure out who kidnapped his wife, Bunny. The Dude is not a likely candidate for a millionaire's courier, especially as he lights up a joint in the hallway of Lebowski's mansion. However, since he's strapped for cash, he happily accepts, and his life changes significantly.
The film's tone has a dark undercurrent, but it maintains a playful sense of the absurd and the surreal that keeps it buoyant and light. For instance, after the Dude gets punched in the face at home, we see him flying over the city of Los Angeles, his arms outstretched, as Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me" plays. Ahead of him, Maude flies on top of his new carpet through the air. The scene is a kind of stoner tableau, a free-spirited fantasy in the midst of his complicated mission. The Dude is an overgrown child in many ways, stepping through each challenge calmly and curiously.
Surreal moments such as this, followed by a montage in which the camera takes the perspective of a bowling ball rolling down a lane at an alley, are part of what has solidified the film's status as a quintessential stoner comedy. "Stoner comedies" are movies that are more enjoyable when stoned, or whose plots revolve around marijuana use. The Big Lebowski is celebrated by comedy lovers for the free-spirited hippie ethic at its center, epitomized by the hapless, endearing "Dude."
The Dude is defined by his ability to stay chill and roll with the punches, but he is accompanied by his foil, Walter, who is much more clumsy, aggressive, and angry, and who ruins everything. Where the Dude wants to ruffle as few feathers as possible and take responsibility for the job he is supposed to do, Walter has bigger plans, and wants to get away with the million allotted for the ransom. Thus, the narrative becomes a humorous power struggle between the two friends: Dude, a lazy pacifist, and Walter, a hot-headed Vietnam vet with anger management issues.
The film is filled with an assortment of eccentric characters, from nympho Bunny to the obsequious butler Brandt, to Maude Lebowski, the millionaire's avant-garde feminist daughter. Played by Julianne Moore, Maude is a caricature of a rich Republican's rebellious daughter, a pretentious and militantly feminist painter whose work the Dude approaches with a certain amount of skepticism. Like most elements of The Big Lebowski, Maude is broad to the point of archetype, but she holds the keys to some pivotal information for the Dude.
