The Tarot of the Big Lebowski

[mbazgrzacki]

Not only a Big Lebowski, but Coen brothers in general. They have their own universe, especially films like No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, and Raising Arizona.

After watching the Coen's film A Serious Man I felt that all the serious reviews I read had missed the many of the points that the film was trying to make. After several weeks of email exchanges, sleeping on it and much googling I put together my own interpretation, which ended up published in the online Dudespaper. Its a bit of a half finished spreadsheet of an essay, interlarded with slabs of quote.
After that it was quite easy to apply the tree of life format to The Big Lebowski.

The tarot of A Serious Man

http://www.zen48963.zen.co.uk/asm-tree-of-life-half.jpg

 

[Debra]

Whew!

Do you think this is intentional?

 

[Philistine]

Do you think this is intentional?

I have no idea, but my gut tells me that we uncover patterns through human understanding, which are just waiting to be accidentally put together. You see, the universe is a very elegant place, despite all our belief in chaos.

mbaz, can't wait to get my hands on A Serious Man and also peruse your essay. Gracias!

 

[prudence]

I saw a Serious Man, I liked it, but at times I did feel a bit lost or struggling with the message it must have been wanting to convey. I could see it as having embodied certain secret truths.....I would not be shocked to find out it had the whole Tree of Life worked into it.

I do look forward to you or anyone else showing us how that Tree is a part of this film. Not in an antagonistic way, but in the same way that I read and embraced your Lebowski tarot essay. I mostly want to see an essay like this about No Country for Old Men. It seemed like a film with many hidden fragments and segments. And I really am enjoying your thoughts on all of these amazing films and how they might connect with different aspects of the tarot.

 

[mbazgrzacki]

Whew!

Do you think this is intentional?

Yes, I think that the Coens were showing off with the 78 cards, playing an in joke for other film directors who may have used a tarot format (I'm thinking Spielberg - close encounters -and Zemeckis his protégé with Forest Gump - 22 trumps).

The Big Lebowski was in many ways a tribute to Chandlers The Big Sleep. The novel had 32 chapters, loosely based on the 32 Paths of wisdom and their tarot counterparts. I believe this was intentional, Chandler's patrons were the wealthy Lloyd family (Californian oil wells), they had also heavily supported Manly P. Hall in his occult ventures.

The Coens are unique among major film directors in that their production method is very tightly controlled and is fully storyboarded at an early stage. They know exactly what they want from each scene with little room for chance.

When the interpretations are placed on the tree of life the scenes and images cluster in a very meaningful way. if they ware just chance images that happened to fit Pamela Smith's imagery it would be unlikely that they would be so conceptually close to the notions embedded in the tree.