MovieChat Forums > The Iceman Cometh (1973) Discussion > this film is so dark, I wonder if the w...

this film is so dark, I wonder if the writer thought

posted 18 years ago by FlorenceLawrence
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This film is so dark, I wonder if the writer thought, I just have to get all this of my chest onto paper, or if he thought in expressing it, he might be the hickey, get people to recognise they are kidding themselves and to stop wasting their lives. really made me think this film, what did everyone else think of it ?

It's a fabulous film about human nature IMHO, written by someone who knew suffering all too well, all his characters are just so rich and recognisable. They easily transfer to a modern age, as sadly trying to push down feelings of discontentment, unhappiness and guilt with alcohol or chemical abuse and lies you half believe, told to yourself, is just as much a modern hobby.

The film see's everyone waiting for the arrival of Hickey (Lee Marvin), why because Hickey is fun, he makes everybody feel better, not only by supplying the booze and therefore artificial joy that brings, but also because he can further enhance the delirium with his gift of knowing just what people want to hear.

Harry's bar provides the setting for this drama, throughout the film we never leave this dark claustrophobic environment. To it's inhabitants though, it's a haven, a place where they can exist one day at a time, without having to ever face the real world.

They all firmly believe that a wonderful life is just waiting outside the door, wishing they would come out, eager for their participation, and just happy to hang on for them to be ready to decide too participate.

Well maybe they don't firmly believe this, when the effects of the alcohol subsides and they have not got someone like Hickey to blow on their tiny little embers of self delusion with words of hope, cold moments of reality, rattle at their consciousness, as the truth attempts to rear it's ugly head.

The occupants of the bar are like a self support group of agoraphobic's, fellow sufferers provide distractions and so less moments of clarity too nag at their guilt ridden souls, asking for a reckoning regarding what a waste they are making of such a precious thing as a human life.

However when Hickey turns up, it's not the Hickey they all know and love, his long awaited arrival, lacks it's usual comforting effect.
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[–] RexDartEskimoSpy 18 years ago

Yeah, Eugene O'Neill really poured out his soul into this play. He incorporated just about every aspect of his life into it in some shape or form. It is a dark and depressing, yet very moving play. It is generally considered to be O'Neill's masterpiece, and I consider it to be one of the best American plays, if not plays in general, of all time.

"What's wrong with showing a guy getting his head cut off?" -Humphrey Bogart

[–] tonygumbrell 18 years ago

I can tell you what I thought. There's a divide in America between the winners and the losers. These were the real losers in all their sordid glory, in all their pathos, and hoplessness, and despair, and agony. America is more full of them today than when I was born, indeed, than any time in my life because little by little we're returning to the conditions of the nineteenth century. This was the wreckage then, and beJesus, now. This is your country, and these, are your countrymen. Earlier this year, the grounds of the facility where I then worked was occupied day and night by homeless alchoholics. I attended a meeting in Seattle City Hall this last June where the plight of homeless alchoholics and the blight they are on the city was the urgent topic and purpose of the meeting. No real solution was proposed. The Mayor states that there are 1800 homeless veterans in the city. What can the total number of the homeless be?
I often had occasion where I worked to overhear the conversations of the homeless alchoholics, and they seemed to inhabit a fantasy world of their own. Their behavior and speech was that of men so addle-pated and deranged that one wondered if they could ever recover their senses. Their persons were generally filthy. Most of them were far younger than me. Young enough so that they ought to have had a life ahead of them; yet, it is doubtful that any of them would ever pull out of it and have any kind of a life. O'Neil made the characters in his play a more articulate than the ones which I described, but not much more than many of the losers I have met in the city's bars, and coffee shops, and greasy-spoon cafes. Some of whom I made the acquintance of, some of whom I befriended, many of whom are now dead. He exposed enough of his characters, and quite enough, to give you a feel for them, the same feel and the same horror of seeing King Lear in the storm for a most classic predessesor in literature. It's easy to condem the passed out nameless drunks on the street as mere stumble-bums. Men who sedate themselves into a torpor and commit slow suicide in front of my eyes eveyday, I don't know how to help or feel for. Maybe there's something wrong with America. Dare we think that? Dare we not.

[–] FlorenceLawrence 18 years ago

I don' think it's just America, sometimes I think we all struggle to really feel anything true.

Society is so jamming our heads with how we should feel, I can see how it would be easy to go into overload and get lost.

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[–] tonygumbrell 18 years ago

There is an eveready place for men to get lost, to retreat from reality into a world where things aren't so bad and there's a facile, instant comradery. Where one can be somebody or something one isn't at work, at home, or on the street, and be recognized as a peer by other men who understand. Where you imagine you stand tall and carry some weight and maybe like Hickey you can glad hand and buffalo the best of them. God wot, I know because I spent the best years of my life polishing the seat of my trousers on a bar stool. And for those who have hit bottom, they can retreat right into the bottle itself. My ex-friend Roger Clark turned yellow, and then orange by the time he was hospitalized with about a week to live. He had massive kidney and liver failure. Roger's home away from home was on one of those bar stools where his fantasies and pipe dreams made something of him, and when he was too broke to come to the bar anymore he drank alone in a rented room for the last few weeks of his life. Like Eugene O'Neil that is what I saw; that is what happened.

[–] lgreenberg30 17 years ago

There's a fascinating "American Masters" documentary about Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill battled alcoholism and depression and had a very troubled family life, both as a child and as an adult. O'Neill seems to have written "Iceman" from the depth of that despair. In the play, "pipe dreams" -- that is, the illusions and lies his characters tell themselves -- are the only way one can find a semblance of happiness in this world. Without pipe dreams, death is the only source of peace. It's possible that Larry Slade represents O'Neill in the play, for he has no pipe dream. He wrestles with the idea of suicide, but is, the character says, too afraid to live or die. Talk about writing from a dark place.

[–] rwh1348 8 years ago

your comments are so compelling and very well articulated . You a writer?

[–] BQQ 8 years ago

Yeah, you can find some great posts on IMDb if you dig a little deeper.

"People get it wrong, but in today's world we don't live longer, we just die harder." -Bruce Willis

[–] magnumco 17 years ago

The bar and alcohol is allegorical.
There are many things in life intoxicating us!