Text: Overnight flowers
Arthur Miller was one of the most influential American playwrights of the 20th century. Contemporary audiences are mostly aware of Arthur Miller in his various identity labels — Marilyn Monroe's ex-husband, daniel day Lewis (the record holder of the three-time Oscar for Best Actor).
Learning more about movies through pop culture icons is naturally a great way to learn more, and Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning theatrical work Death of a Salesman and its many film versions have not received enough attention from young viewers.
Because the theme of his works mainly focuses on the survival dilemma, spiritual distress, and crisis of faith of contemporary people, it is often used to compare and explore with the famous playwright Tennessee Williams (represented as "Desire StreetCar", etc.).
In Tennessee's works, the identity of the protagonist is more of a fallen aristocrat in the South, showing the kind of ruin, morbidity, and decadence, and more of the laziness, intoxication and madness of the former petty-bourgeois fantasy countryside after the shattering; and the characters in Miller's works are mostly the bottom of the city, they are or traders, farmers, laborers, they are struggling in the despair and panic of the economic depression, running and wandering for the basic needs of subsistence.
The reason why classics are classics is not necessarily that they are supreme and insurmountable in some aspects, but the themes of classic works usually show a kind of universality that spans the times and can provide a steady stream of exploration space for audiences from generation to generation.
The movie "Death of a Salesman" satirizes the nothingness of the "American Dream", and exposes the deceptiveness of the "American Dream" and the distortion and alienation of the individual by telling the tragedy of an ordinary salesman's destruction in a vain fantasy and a cruel reality.
The creation and deconstruction of dreams seem to be diametrically opposed, but they also exist in the development of mainstream Hollywood films, and they are not completely opposite.
On the one hand, there are dreams such as "The Wizard of Oz" and "Forrest Gump", which promotes the positive function of equality of opportunity, individual freedom, the possibility of dreams, the values of goodness, justice, and faithfulness, and conveys a beautiful creed that "anyone can reap success through hard work" to meet the audience's expectations for an ideal life; On the other hand, there are also "American Beauty" and "Little Beauty in the Sunshine" such as the satire and ridicule of the "American Dream", and Hollywood movies seem to remind the audience at the same time that the dream is finally a phantom, and after the bubble bursts, how to accept reality and accept yourself? It is the problem that ordinary people need to face more directly.
01
Willie Lohman, the protagonist of the movie "The Death of a Salesman", as a salesman with limited education, is a portrayal of thousands of ordinary people. The perspective of the small people makes the realist value of the film really touch the harshest bottom life, getting rid of the limitations of the middle class and aristocratic themes commonly found in Hollywood themes.
The first is the factor of the times, which is the social significance of the film. Because small people do not have an economic foundation and social status, they are more likely to become poor and in a difficult situation in the unpredictable changes of the times. In the face of force majeure such as the external environment and objective conditions, they cannot resist suffering with their own will, but have to passively bear it, and the confusion and helplessness wrapped in the great wheel of history are the root causes of the tragedy of the little people.
In the post-industrial era of commercial society, under the guidance of money laws and material interests, the "American Dream" began to distort and alienate, from the initial "equality" and "freedom" to a kind of materialistic-dominated "above interests", which inspired countless people behind the "gold rush dream" Behind the money worship and consumerism is self-evident.
The "Great Depression" of the late 1920s and 1930s was experienced by author Arthur Miller himself and set in the story of Death of a Salesman. The outbreak of the stock market crash shattered the bubble of false prosperity. Bankruptcy and unemployment on a large scale have forced everyone to face up to the current predicament of life. The despair and bitterness of the Great Depression, the "profit-seeking" mentality exacerbated the demise of ideals, the degeneration of morality, deception, speculation, oppression, and dumping, and greed for money at all costs eventually destroyed the pure land of the spiritual world.
Therefore, the salesman Willy Lohman, although sincere, diligent, responsible and faithful, could not escape the fate of unemployment. When the good qualities of "diligence" and "hard work" that he was proud of could not make a profit for the boss, he completely lost the opportunity to continue working.
As a screw in the huge money operation machine, his fatigue and loneliness are difficult to dissolve after all.
Secondly, there is the personal factor, and Willie's tragedy also comes from his inability to reconcile beautiful fantasies with his own realities.
People and social environments and the face of the times are always inseparable, and Willie is gradually lost in the illusion of "business mythology". He is accustomed to maintaining vanity and self-esteem with fabricated lies, and masking inner fragility with self-narcotic hypocrisy. His braggado, bluff, and pompous pretense became the whole gesture of his life.
That inflated pathological vanity, alienated self-esteem, is vulnerable to the collision of reality. Constantly paralyzing and fooling the self with illusions, the end result is to lead to complete destruction in a cruel reality.
02
In the movie "The Death of a Salesman", the complex contradictions between father and son are the consistent embodiment of Arthur Miller's in-depth depiction of ethical conflicts (usually based on the intimate relationships of family, father and son, husband and wife, relatives and friends). The tragedy and ambivalence of the individual and the tragic effect on the family are the expansion and extension of the individual tragedy.
As a tragic figure living under the illusion of the "American Dream" myth, Willie inevitably passed on his life creed to his son with education, bringing devastating disasters to a family. Willie's love for his son is accompanied by wishful thinking and paranoia, and he forcibly instills his own sick values into his son, but he cannot predict that while using his father's will to domesticate and shape the values of the next generation, his son's spiritual world is also distorted and alienated, becoming a victim of his sick will.
His unrealistic expectations and excessive praise not only indulged the character of the two sons in the midst of pampering and coddling, aggravated their moral corruption and degeneration, and formed the defects of personality, but also completely made the son lost in the lies of a good future and excellent personality, unable to see clearly and face himself.
The ending of the film, in which Willie commits suicide in exchange for the last material wealth for his son and family, and obtains nihilistic honors through self-destruction (and in the end only his family and one friend participates), this ending is more tragic and ironic. As a salesman, an ordinary little man, his death did not matter.
This is undoubtedly the most bitter satire of the "American Dream", in the era of materialistic desires and the supremacy of money, too many people who have no opinion, blind obedience, and follow the tide have lost themselves in the myth of the "American Dream", fall into nothingness, and go to destruction, and this tragedy will eventually further destroy the spirit of others through the bond of family kinship.
What is particularly commendable is that Frederick March, who plays Willie, is meticulous in his presentation of Willie's physical and mental state, both in terms of body form and expression control. The hesitant steps and intoxicated forms all reflect the richness of his body language as an actor; what is more amazing is that the expressiveness of the expression, tiredness, sleepiness, despair, loneliness, fragility, and resentment, are all highlighted in the eyes. After winning two Oscars for "Doctor Who" and "The Golden Age", Frederick March received another nomination for Best Actor.
03
The film Death of a Salesman was released in 1951 and received recognition from mainstream awards such as The Venice Film Festival, Golden Globe Award for Best Director and Actor in a Drama Category. In the nominations for the 24th Academy Awards, the film received five nominations, including Best Actor.
On the question of how to subtly put theatrical repertoire on the screen, the director of the film, Lasro Benedict, also made a certain attempt and exploration.
One of the most notable expressions of the Death of a Salesman is Arthur Miller's use of "stream of consciousness." One is the protagonist Willie's recollection of the things that actually existed in the past, and the other is willy's illusion and imagination in the current time and space, neither of which exists in reality, but Willie, who is in a state of intoxication, trance, and behavior, just becomes the carrier of the combination of the two and reality.
In the film, director Lassro Benedict, in the process of imaging, did not choose to use too many montage techniques to show the correspondence with the "stream of consciousness", create emotional separation and alienation, but as far as possible to take a "one-shot to the end" approach.
For example, in a conversation with his wife, Willie's lover in his mind is in the same space as his real wife, and the inner contradictions and guilt are self-evident; the same example is the fantasy brother Ben who appears when talking to his friend Charlie.
The purpose of this treatment is obvious: the continuity of the long shot in time and space blurs the boundary between reality and illusion to a greater extent, and presents the protagonist's fantasy and the crazy state in reality very expressively. This is not only the protagonist Willy Lohmann's state of insanity, loneliness and exhaustion, and self-intoxication, but it is also more difficult for the audience to argue which are the protagonist's real encounters and which are mental imaginations.
Conclusion: The film "Death of a Salesman" exposes the nihilistic nature of the "American Dream" precisely to advocate the ideal of true meaning while guarding against a vain and flashy dream that is stolen by the concept of "money worship" and "materialistic inflation". After the disillusionment of dreams, how will you accept reality and accept yourself? This is exactly what the audience is worth thinking about. Perhaps, getting rid of self-deception, paralysis and foolishness is the beginning of truly seeing the self; looking directly at the actual situation, accepting and facing the real self, can we get rid of the illusory nothingness and realize the value of the self.