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The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers

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I LOVE the Coen Brothers. They are the unrivaled champions of American film making. This book does absolutely ZERO as far as giving insight into what makes them tick. We're to believe that this book delves into a deeper meaning than what's on screen by naming it "The Gospel...", but all this book does is give a general overview of the plot to their movies. Sorry, but I can go to imdb for that.
This book dedicates 95% of its pages to generalized descriptions of their movies. That's it. Hardly any analysis whatsoever. Each movie has its own chapter dedicated to it, and the author spends 7-10 pages describing the entire plot with an occasional quote. At the end the author adds a brief paragraph or two telling us what she feels is the "moral" of the film. If you were to add all of her own personal thoughts and insights into the Coen Brothers' film works, you would come away with maybe five pages of fluff. As I started reading the book, I actually said out loud, "you've got to be kidding me with this!". Why would anyone interested in the Coen Brothers read a page synopsis when they can just go watch the movie? And why would anyone who has seen their films bother with this book? They wouldn't. And shouldn't. Just go see the movie if you haven't already. To add insult to injury, she prefaces the book by talking down to the reader by saying, "opinions are important, and they are subjective, colored, and shaped by life experiences". Gee, thanks Einstein. Like I needed someone to tell me that. It's even more insulting to realize that she has no opinions of her own in the book. Where are these colored opinions shaped by life experiences, oh enlightened author?
I also feel this book is a bit deceptive in its advertising. "The Big Lebowski" is, without a doubt, the most popular of all the Coen Brothers' films, and the author chooses to put the dude on the cover and name the book "The Dude Abides" to generate interest. However, she doesn't give any thoughts as to why she gives the book this title, and doesn't offer any extended analysis of "The Big Lebowski". Not that I care that "Lebowski" isn't covered more, but it's clear that she's phishing for customers knowing that Achievers everywhere will be interested in its dudetastic cover. I've already written another review on Amazon about my dislike of "The Big Lebowski" being used to peddle subpar products, and this book does exactly that.
She should have named this book "Coen Brothers' Movie Transcripts In Massively Edited Form". It would have been far more accurate.
Maybe I'm just jealous. If I knew I could get published by writing 10 page summaries of films on the level of an 8th grade writing project I would have done this years ago!

Essentially a collection of plot summaries and questionable assumptions that are never really tied to the films in a believable fashion. While there's nothing to say that the Falsani's interpretations are wrong, there's also nothing to say they are right, as what's presented are a bunch of "maybe's" and "you might think's" that seem to reflect the author's personal lens more than any meaning contained within the films themselves. Seems like a lazy attempt to cash in on the Coen brother's popularity, without offering any real insight. Of course all this might be forgiven if the book had a spark of personality or humor, which it does not. Blew through it in a few hours, and want them back, though it would be interesting to see the topic covered in a more comprehensive fashion by another author. As it stands, Coen fans and neophytes alike will be bored.

In The Dude Abides--The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers, award-winning religious columnist Cathleen Falsani offers a unique and engaging look at the "spiritual messages" she finds permeating the Coen Brothers' movies.

Now, "spiritual message." Odds are, that's not what most moviegoers expect to find in the darkly comic and brutally violent cinematic vision of Joel and Ethan Coen. Neither is the word "gospel," for that matter. While wisely resisting the temptation to cram their films into what she calls a "God-shaped box," Falsani succeeds in tracing the theological threads she sees holding the "Coeniverse" together.

She writes, "While marked by murder, mayhem, deception, and all manner of chaos, there is an order--a moral order--to the world depicted in Joel and Ethan Coen's films. That's the good news. The bad news is that when the moral order is upset, the consequences can be dire, brutal, and swift."

Published by Zondervan, a Christian book publisher whose mission, according to its website, is to produce "resources that glorify Jesus Christ and promote biblical principles," The Dude Abides will probably challenge (in a good way) the expectations of Zondervan's evangelical readers as well as the more secular-minded among Coen Brother fans.

As a self-described "sometimes churchgoing Catholic-turned-Baptist-turned-freelance Episcopalian" who has interviewed the likes of Bono from U2 and some guy who ran for president named Barack Obama, Falsani is certainly up to the challenge of navigating her text between the two groups. Her down-to-earth writing style glides easily from summarizing convoluted Coen Brother movie plots to drawing from Zen Buddhism, Jewish mysticism, and her own open-hearted Christian faith to interpret them.

The book covers each of the Coen Brothers's movies, from their 1986 debut Blood Simple to A Serious Man (due out this fall), with each chapter focusing on a different film. Falsani uses a "forest and the trees" approach to organizing the chapters, providing a short overview of the movie first, followed by a more in-depth theological discussion of it before concluding with a brief "Moral of the Story." This structure not only provides a great introduction to each movie for those who are unfamiliar with the films, but also appeals to a die-hard Coen Brothers fan like me.

Falsani's movie analyses should also intrigue the uninitiated and fans alike. She sees the Coen oeuvre as consisting broadly of cautionary tales (such as Blood Simple), "Judeo-Christian morality plays" (like Fargo), holy fools (Hi McDunnough in Raising Arizona), foolish hubris (Barton Fink), and unflinching explorations of the nature of evil, Job-like suffering, and the distance or seeming absence of God (No Country for Old Men, A Simple Man).

Her interpretations also provide nuanced ways of understanding the quirky characters populating Coen Brother films. For example, she places The Dude (the burnout main character of The Big Lebowski) within kabbalistic lore as a lamed-vavnik, "a righteous soul with whom the eventual healing of the world abides". Other theological takes may seem a little strained, though. The pregnant sheriff in Fargo, Marge Gunderson, is certainly an endearingly good-hearted character, but is she really a redeeming Christ figure as Falsani posits?

There are other interpretative quibbles I have and I do think Falsani relies too heavily on recapping plot than interpreting it, but, as The Dude would say, that's just, like, my opinion and her opinion, man. Besides, that may just be the point. Falsani doesn't intend for her book to be a definitive study of all things Coen. With its section of group study questions at the end, the book's intention may be to help elicit conversations (albeit from a more or less Christian frame of reference) about these complex movies (sample: "After exploring the Coens' fourteen films, what do you think the two brothers make of God?").

For Falsani, the Coen Brothers' cinematic gospel is more concerned with posing life's deepest questions than it is with providing us with ultimate answers to them. In The Dude Abides, she makes a good-faith effort to offer her responses to the existential questions the unorthodox filmmakers raise and invites her readers to do the same.

Maybe by sharing our responses with one another in a similar spirit, regardless of our religious faith or lack thereof, we'll find a way to abide together a little better. And I don't know about you, but as the Stranger says at the end of The Big Lebowski, I take comfort in that.

There are so many things I imagined _The Dude Abides_ being before I read it--a book of film criticism, a tongue-in-cheek "Philosophy of ..." sort of book, possibly even an out-and-out theology discussion. What I got, instead, is a shallow, surface-level summary with little in the way of valuable insights on the work of these fine filmmakers.

_The Dude Abides_ has one chapter dedicated to each of the Coen Bros.' 14 films. Here's what you get in each chapter:

* "The Forest," a brief introduction of sorts that sets the tone of the movie. This lasts 1 or 2 paragraphs.

* "The Trees," which is basically a film-school synopsis of the film. This can run anywhere from, about 6 pages (_Intolerable Cruelty_) to 10 pages (_No Country For Old Men_), with most being about 8 pages. And make no mistake, this is pretty much synopsis. While it carries the occasional aside or insight, it doesn't engage in deep analysis. If you've seen the film, there's a good chance you'll get bored quick.

* "The Moral of the Story," where the author offers what she thinks the film "means". These insights are often shallow, offering little more than you and your friends already figured out if you ever spent an afternoon talking about these films over lunch or during a long car ride. These are usually only a paragraph in length, sometimes two.

I am not kidding! Out of each approx. 10 page chapter, 80% is used up by film synopsis! And then in the end, she offers up her "Conclusions," which run about a page, and some Group Study questions such as ""After exploring the Coen's fourteen films, what do you think the brothers make of God?" These last are actually the most interesting part, and if Falsani had written a book answering them from her own perspective, it would have been a a far more interesting read.

Falsani is billed on the cover as an "Award-Winning Religion Writer" for her contributions to the Chicago Sun-Times, but whatever skill she has in reporting has not translated into the realm of film criticism, philosophy, and theology. I was able to read through this book in about half an hour, because apart from the final paragraphs and the occasional morsel elsewhere, there was very little I wanted to read.

Do not waste your time with this book.

This is a book to be briefly browsed, not bought.

For reasons unclear to me, the author is trying to discover the Christian moral values in the Jewish Coen brothers' films. She analyzes each film separately, with a tacked-on "This is the Moral" at the end.

The rundowns of each film's story are well-done, but the "morals" are little more than most people could figure out for themselves. Worst of all, she doesn't discuss the Coens' ouvre in a global sense -- what, if any, moral values inform their universe, and how they inform their films.

An extremely disappointing book. Don't say you weren't warned.

I was very excited about this book just from the title. My husband and I have enjoyed many of the Coens brothers' movies and have often hashed out our views on the plots, characters, etc. When it arrived I dove right in...and was finished about an hour later. I was not really disappointed; I was ambivalent. While I was glad to have the synopsis available for the movies I had not seen, it seemed that more work was put in to each movie's synopsis than was put into the analysis.

I had hoped for deeper analysis, maybe bringing up good points about the plot or characters that I had not previously explored. Sometimes the analysis seemed very thin and at other times it seemed forced. The most interesting part for me was the forward by Rabbi Allen Secher; after finishing that part, I found there were times I had to push myself to keep reading.

If you are looking for a light primer on the movies of the Coen brothers, this is a great read. If you are looking for more in-depth analysis, you should keep moving on.

Cathleen Falsani's "The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers" attempts to give insightful commentary on the films of the Coen Brothers, through picking up on primarily Judeo-Christian themes inherent in the movies. The concept is applauded and the book could have contained some meaningful concepts for the reader to ponder. However, 95% of the book is film synopsis--poor considering most of the audience has probably seen these movies multiple times. Moreover, even if one hadn't seen one of the movies, they would probably want to see it, rather than read her sometimes inaccurate synopses. (For example, she indicates that the McDonough's (Raising Arizona) lived in a trailer park. They lived in a remote trailer in the desert, but not a trailer park. I was shocked the author and editor missed this.)

Falsani takes each film and devotes one paragraph to broad overview (The Forest), then gives about 10 pages of a detailed synopsis (The Trees), followed by her opinion as to the moral of the story. However, this "Moral of the Story..." section is usually about two paragraphs long, with the first paragraph devoted to a religious concept and then the second paragraph saying how the movie is like that concept. Depth is completely lacking. The author does nothing to try to convince the reader that her viewpoint is correct or supported by anything in the movie. At the end of the book is "The Gospel," but the author only spends 3/4 of one page trying to tie together all of these themes. Following that is the 14 Coenmandments (which probably could have been trimmed to 10 to match the biblical) and then 15 Group Study questions.

The Group Study questions really baffle me. Some of them are very thought provoking. If the author had spent any time trying to answer these questions, it might have been a worthwhile endeavor. Instead, you are left with a somewhat accurate synopsis of each film, written slightly better than those on IMDB, followed by some commentary on the obvious moral parallels in each film. I kept waiting for something novel from the author, but nothing came...well, the dude abides.

I was so excited to read this book. I'm actually working on an essay regarding the same topic, religious themes in the work of the Coen Bros. and I wanted to use this book as a baseline to work from.

Unfortunately, it is almost completely useless in when it comes to analysis or criticism. The chapters consist of plot summaries of each film (as if you'd be reading this book if you hadn't seen the movies) and then a 2-3 paragraph conclusion that purports to reveal the "moral of the story." The only two movies the author seems to put any real thought into are The Big Lebowski and Fargo. It seems like she may have only seen some of the others once or twice and really has nothing to say about them. To whittle a Coen Bros. movie down to a supposed moral is over-simplistic in and of itself. But to attempt sum up the point of such complex films in less than one page, without referencing specific quotes or scenes or reviews, is just outrageous.

Then there are the little annoyances. For example, the author refers to the three washer-women in 'O Brother Where Art Thou' as Homer's muses when they are clearly meant to represent the sirens. Errors like this make it difficult to take the rest of the book seriously.

The author seems to have done minimal research and doesn't even offer any unique insight into most of the films. The thesis seems to be "These films contain religious themes" and not much beyond that. If I got a first-year English student's literary critique of a book or film, and they spent 90% of the paper giving me a plot summary, I would hand the paper back and have them do it again. That's essentially what this book does.

I am very disappointed.

While it was obvious this book was no dense film-nerd obsession with every single frame of the CBs' work, I still opted for this book, hoping it might give some insights.

It's plain to see that Cathleen Falsani loves Coen Brothers (CB) movies. Good for her; I love them, too. And she's apparently an established religion writer; again, good for her. But, sadly, she's taken two things that she loves and has assumed she can meld them together in a unique, synergistic product that has meaning not only for her but also for others. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, as this book is a shallow exploration of "the spiritual messages of their films," more accurately a collection of plodding synopses. The subtitle promises an integrated analysis of CB cinematic spiritual outlook, but delivers a maddening glut of synopsis. Devoted fans of CB work will be highly disappointed; if you know these films intimately, you will be annoyed. Those who haven't seen the films will have all of them thoroughly spoiled.

I love Coen Brothers movies, every single one of them, even the "bad" ones. More than anything, they fascinate me, in that I know each movie is ABOUT something, but it's not always clear what that is. I mean, I've seen Raising Arizona 100+ times, but still can't determine exactly what it's movie about. At the end of Blood Simple, dying Loren Visser laughs at the convoluted pipes hidden below the sink as a bead of condensation forms and falls--this is deeply symbolic filmmaking, but what exactly is it communicating? I was hoping this book might help. Sorry, no.

This unfortunately shallow book is almost exclusively about character lines and dialog, with just a bit of attention to non-dialog character action, but doesn't even begin to incorporate any other integral filmmaking components. Spirituality in a film, or any of its messages/themes doesn't necessarily come through only in spoken dialog; framing, lighting, depth of field, layout, music, costuming and more contribute to set a tone, evoke emotions, and either directly communicate a theme or symbolically suggest it. Falsani discusses absolutely none of this in her book.

The structure of the book is one film per chapter, so you've got 14 chapters, beginning with "Blood Simple" and ending with A Serious Man. There's an intro that sets the tone for the book, and a foreword by a Montana rabbi. Each chapter has a "forest" portion, which is a broad, two-to-three-paragraph synopsis of the movie, followed by a "trees" portion, which is a detailed discussion of the movie (you get a grand total 35 pages of non-synopsis narrative). The "trees" portion is a highly detailed synopsis, with observations and asides on the films' spirituality. Each chapter concludes with a "moral" of 1-2 paragraphs which wraps up the movie and its spiritual lessons. Unfortunately, the three sections not only overlap, but also tend to repeat, often verbatim. The "forest" and "trees" portion are redundant, and I'm surprised an editor let that through. A single, integrated narrative of each movie's chapter would have been a much more cohesive approach.

Now, spirituality is not my thing, but I like to think I have a broader understanding of it than most. But even then, Falsani's discussion of it came across as poorly constructed, shallow, and most certainly not tied together across the entire book. There was no overarching discussion of CB movie spirituality, other than a shocking lame one-page conclusion, and 14 "Coenmandments," little takeaway snippets like "love always wins," that I couldn't help but see as trite.

Clearly Falsani likes The Big Lebowski the most--who doesn't!?--as if you couldn't tell from the cover, as quotes from it are sprinkled throughout the book. I can't help but see this as a cheap gimmick to sell the book. I therefore expected a deeper, more meaningful analysis of this film, and alas, its discussion is every bit as lame, short, shallow and trite as the others.

In terms of technical structure, it's unclear why Falsani provides actors' names in parentheses when identifying a character. First, this is done inconsistently, which again is poor editing, and more importantly, the actor identification provides no value-added to her discussion. Her story is about characters, dialog, and spirituality, so it really makes no difference at all which Hollywood Name is providing it.

There are meager notes (13 in a book of 222 pages), but there are also other instances of fact and quotations that clearly require citation but have none. There are other "Dude" books out there, so why no references to them? And what about all of the serious books about CB filmmaking? This is lax writing, and again bad editing, and smacks of a rush to deadline. This struck me as a shallow pretense at scholarship, the kind of thing you see in bad college essays. More research and citation, and application of that with her knowledge of spirituality and the movie, would have made this book much more worth reading.

Bottom Line: This book is not film commentary, nor is it critique. It's an non-cinema author's passion for a hobby and her career field of study/work, awkwardly and incompletely smashed together. It does not work well, as it appears the author, with a bare minimum of preparation and research just banged out--just in time for the opening of "A Serious Man"--what she knew about Coen spirituality after watching their movies a few times. This book left me with only the slightest appreciation of what the CBs may be trying to communicate about spirituality with their films. It did, however, leave me with a lot of knowledge about how Falsani sees the world, and how she relates her passion for religion to all aspects of her life. If you know nothing of Coen Brothers movies, and don't plan on ever seeing them, then get this book.

I had high hopes for this book, which was a gift from my wife. However, sadly this text comes across as if it were a series of book reports written by a high school freshman.

Each chapter is little more than a shallow plot summary of each film, delivered from a very thinly veiled Christian point of view. Throughout the book, entire pages are dedicated to direct transcriptions of dialogue from the films. However, no analysis follows the transcription. Instead the author simply moves on to outline the next surface-level activity in the plot line.

The protagonists from several the films are simplistically labeled as Jesus, while an occasional religious reference begins to scratch the surface of what the film might suggest from a Christian point of view. Each film recap ends with "The Moral of the Story" - each of which is a very rudimentary "Love thy neighbor" type of message, filled with Christian references.

Numerous assertions made in the book felt like a tremendous stretch. For example, in "Fargo," the author aligns the villains with each of the "seven deadly sins" - pointing out actions or lines of dialogue to support this position. Grimsrud's insatiable appetite for "Pancakes Haus" clearly represents the sin of gluttony, the author claims. Very much a stretch, and quite oversimplified. After all, they are clearly villains, so it would be natural that they would be "lustful" or "gluttons," etc. I'd like the author to go a step further and discuss the significance of the seven deadly sins to the overall narrative.

I don't recommend this book to anyone who is already familiar with the Coen Brothers' films and looking for a deeper insight into them. The book is so very biased, that while it does give initial lip service to Judaism, Buddhism, etc - the "answer" is always presented within Christian terminology.

An appropriate audience could be someone who is strongly Christian and has not yet watched these films. The book would provide them with a top line synopsis of each film's plot, and would frame each film in a simple-to-understand Christian context. This could potentially interest somebody who is not familiar with the films, and draw them in.