Death of a Salesman

Fuck, why would you give the twist away in the title? Could have used a spoiler alert.

Pretty good. There is one dramatic scene where copious amounts of liquid come out of John Malkovich's face if I remember correctly that is funny as well.

Despite some moments of overtheatricality (and this can be forgiven, since it's, well...a filmed play), Hoffman, Lang, Reid, and especially a young Malkovich, put on an absolute acting CLINIC as they spin the sad yarn of never-was sales hack Willie Loman and his disintegrating career, family and psyche (it's not a good time to be the elder Loman). Many lessons about self-deception and the value of HAVING plans vs. actually executing them are given the filmmakers' undivided attention.

How do you ruin Death of a Salesman? Cast Dustin Hoffman!

Hot damn can Hoffman act. Malcovich does a great job as well and ultimately this film does the play every bit of justice it deserves.

It's difficult to imagine a better performance of this play...the cast, headed by Dustin Hoffman, is uniformly marvelous, especially Durning, Kate Reid, and both the sons. Granted, it's not terribly cinematic, but the problematic elements of narrative flow posed by the play as written (namely, the bleed-throughs from the past) are dealt with beautifully by Schlöndorff. My one objection: the crappy, sentimental background music that would have been much more at home in 60s TV show.

It's a slow-paced, dialogue-heavy, deeply depressing melodrama with no action.

Powerful and searing production is inevitably (and deliberately) stagy, with the actors going full-throttle and holding nothing back; Schlöndorff’s handling is to be commended by turns leaning into the blatant artifice, while staging his actors in such a way that they (and the audience) never feel hemmed in by the inherent claustrophobia. Hoffman is superb, expertly balancing Loman’s false and brittle bravado; Malkovich equally fine as his doppelganger and shattered "magic mirror".

6??????

I felt Dustin Hoffman was a good choice of actor for the main character - he does well playing the main character, the thoughtful yet curmudgeonly man (Willy Loman). Willy's vocalised constant stream of thoughts was something I could relate to myself. This is a slow paced film but its reasonably good I thought as a character focussed drama. The setting the film is mostly in, the family house (mostly), is quite sparse and I felt it had the look of a theatrical production, stage show/play perhaps.