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What is fate?
In this case, Willy Loman is bound by his belief that personality alone, of being liked, is enough to make it to the American Dream. Unable to reconcile that those days never existed, and that hard work involved more than a firm handshake and a smile, he becomes despondent as he thinks of the lost potential. He is reminded in flashbacks and visions of relatives and friends who have succeeded.
His two sons are also confined to Willy's delusions of grandeur. Biff, played by Malkovich, had a future as a football star, but was handicapped by his dad's inhibitions and lack of reality. When he realizes his dad is a failure without integrity, after idolizing him, he concludes he too will be a failure.
Hap, on the other hand, Bif's brother, played by Stephen Lang, is a young Willy. He thinks his dad is right, and although he lives in futile mediocrity, believes dreaming is enough.
Kate Reid plays Willy's wife, Linda. She knows Willy is a failure, but tries to exist within the lie. She never declares the truth, but instead allows Willy to dream without substance.
Willy's hopes are shown worthless when he meets up with those, like Bernard, the nerdy math geek when Bif and Hap were children, and now practicing law in front of the Supreme Court. Willy asks what the secret is. His dream is nothing but the puff of a distortion of a Horatio Alger story, but he won't accept it. Bernard's father, Willy's neighbor, offers him a job, but Willy refuses.
The conflict is about encountering reality, and who will meet the truth. Can Biff live his simple dream of working outside with his hands, but by doing so must destroy the family structure. He knows it, and so he struggles.
Willy Loman's failure is like the hope of an old spiritual show follower, looking for salvation, but not willing to commit to what gets paired with it. It is a search for meaning. Despite a pessimistic premise, there is hope resident in this amazing film.
I fully recommend "Death of a Salesman."
Anthony Trendl
Hoffman is excellent, as is Malkovich and indeed everyone else. Like all great plays this is open to different interpretive treatments. For me, this version places too much of the blame on Willie's personal failings and insufficient on the way that society is organised. However, that's why art at the level that Miller practised it bears repeated revisiting; because there is always something else to be learnt from it.
to watch the film. The DVD arrived in good time and in good shape!
The distance from the stage to the screen is sometimes too far for plays to make it successfully and, for me, this is the case here. Read more
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