Word: salesman
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Three cons (Clooney, Turturro and Nelson) are on the lam in '30s Mississippi. A blind prophet intones, "You shall see a cow on top of a cotton bale, and many other startlements." Startlements are indeed in store: a one-eyed, toad-squishing salesman (Goodman); three maidens washing their laundry in a stream. These, and the name of the bombastic schemer Clooney plays - Everett Ulysses McGill - should be sufficient clues to identify the film's source: "based on The Odyssey by Homer." While tout Hollywood purloins comic books for its scenarios, Joel and Ethan Coen raid noble antiquity: not just Homer...
Grown men were crying. It was last Friday night at the Shubert Theater downtown, and a friend and I had just seen the newest revival of Arthur Miller's classic 1949 play, "Death of a Salesman." This version, starring Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman, swept the Tony Awards last year and has proven as formidable a rendition of the play as those starring Lee J. Cobb, George C. Scott and Dustin Hoffman. The performace Friday was no exception, and afterwards, as I watched fellow members of the audience cry--in some cases, bawl--I realized that the play...
...Death of a Salesman" is the story of Willy Loman, a traveling salesman who has reached the end of his career. The play's success is in the slow, torturous way that Willy grapples with his fate--he cannot bring himself to face the reality of the choices he has made. For many literary critics, the brilliance of "Death of a Salesman" was that this simple message conveyed the tragedy of the everyman, and in such a way that an audience of any kind could empathize. Joel Henning of the Wall Street Journal said that his father, a businessperson, never...
There is a related view of "Death of a Salesman," one that not only applies to our generation but also has direct influence on Harvard students. It has to do with Willy's motto, the one that he lives by: "It's important to be well-liked." It is this mantra which leads Willy to denigrate his neighbors and friends, a trait that he imbues to his children at the expense of pursuing their education and that leads him down the path to self-destruction. The fundamental truth Miller reveals is that the flipside of always trying to be well...
...constantly seek the approval of others. But the tendency is there for some, and the temptation for the rest of us is great. The easiest way to understand the tragedy of such a lifestyle is by reading the piece of literature that most powerfully conveys it. "Death of a Salesman" is a 90-page play that one could easily finish on the plane ride home. And the message is significantly more important that chomping on some pretzels and finishing the crossword puzzle in Delta's Sky magazine. I think Arthur Miller would agree that no matter how hard...