Work can become the biggest illusion of one's life, or it can manifest all kinds of delusional thinking, lies and rotten&impossible projects. Work can take on a life of its own, becoming a lofty dream about what life should be that has nothing to do with living with other people or doing good. This is work as an abstract striving, to be number one.
Death of a salesman (dir. Volker Schlöndorff) creates a vivid image of a man living in his own world, dreaming his lonely dreams about the successful life, being the perfect salesman. In reality, this man, Willy as he is called, is lost, on the verge of alzheimer's, and has lost touch with his family, nursing an antagonistic relation to his son, the one who could have become a brilliant football player. After a bunch of years on the road, his boss can no longer afford to pay him a salary, so he lives on commissions only. He's a shattered man, and were it not for his can-do wife and his kind neighbor, he would have ended up in poverty a long time ago. Dustin Hoffman's performance may be severely theatrical, but it is fascinating to see him veer from anger and humiliation to incoherent nostalgic mumbling. The two sons have come home for a while. One whose career is somewhat pleasing to the father, even though - a bum, quite successful. The other is getting old, 34!, and has not dedicated his life to anything specific. Death of a salesman revolves around the tragedy of appearances. Appearances will always, at some point, wither away to reveal an ugly truth or a scary lacuna. What do these people want? Well, instead of didactically leading his characters to the light, Arthur Miller, who originally wrote the play, show how relationships are sedimented and how change comes to seem more and more impossible as people's perception of themselves get increasingly rigid.
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