In the movie, the scene of the male protagonist Louis chewing gum seems to be a bit too much. It wasn't until halfway through the movie, when I saw the scene where the male protagonist couldn't bear to rummage for cigarettes, I suddenly realized:
He was chewing gum to quit smoking.
When thinking, he took out a piece of chewing gum and chewed it in his mouth; before asking the insider, he took out a piece of chewing gum and began to chew. Chew a piece of gum whenever he wanted to smoke. More than one scene in the film includes the detail that he rummages through his pants pockets and comes up with a pile of gum wrappers.
Many people use chewing gum to quit smoking, one of the most famous is Robert Downey Jr. Downey quit smoking for the sake of his lover, his wife, Louis. A detective who has no sense of mission for his job and just wants to make a living. He sleeps with his female assistant and eats the vinegar of his wife and neighbors. He wants to be a good father, but in the end he always behaves like a bad guy. Friendly bastard. But he was struggling, and every time he chewed a piece of chewing gum, he was fighting against his inner addiction, holding on to that little bit of hope and trying to escape.
In actor George's line, cigarettes are what separates George himself from the character Superman. Superman doesn't smoke. George looked at himself in the mirror when the words came out of his pillow, knowing that no one cared about George anymore. So he snuffed out his cigarette and waved to the cheering children outside the window.
He stood against the light, burly, and received the cheers that belonged to Superman. But among these radiant smiles, none of them belonged to him.
Between performances, George smokes in a Superman uniform, speaking and acting vulgarly, as if in a defiance of Superman's identity.
So, what do cigarettes represent? When Louis rummaged through the box to find the cigarette in the tin box, leaned against the wall and spit out the smoke ring that had been held in his chest for a long time; when George looked at the mirror with half of the cigarette in his hand, he knew that he even lost his life. The freedom to smoke a cigarette at mealtime—I think, cigarettes are the invincible demon, the real and ugly self.
We always see our sins: greed, selfishness, indulgence... When George was interviewing for the role of Superman, he clearly saw Superman in the circle, or read the lines of the villain. Maybe he never wanted to be Superman, because he felt so filthy, playing an incarnation of justice seemed like a big joke: a villain who was raised by the boss's wife, and a symbolic hero. Satire. There is no character less like George's own than Superman.
Except for George and Louis, almost every man in the movie smokes. The proud people in Hollywood always have cigars in their hands, and those proud people always bear the most sinful part of the people. I don't know if that's an over-interpretation, but the detective who betrayed Louis in the past gave him a cigar when he was quitting smoking, and Louis learned about it from the man who threatened him dropped a half-smoking cigar. Truth be told, cigarettes play a big role even in the plot.
Louis sympathized with George, and I think he saw himself in George. The same is so dissatisfied with the status quo and unable to change, the same is struggling to escape from the current life. Louis always seemed confident, only the piece of gum in his mouth betrayed his nervousness: people are most prone to smoking addiction under pressure. George is always witty and charming, but the sad song only he can understand. So when all this accumulated to a certain extent, the last straw that broke the camel:
Louis' neurotic client kills his suspected cheating wife, and George is banned from wrestling like a circus clown.
George chose to draw a tarot card and let God decide his destiny.
Louis chose to start taking responsibility for his work, finding out the truth about George's death.
Louis saw the look George gave himself after he had drawn the tarot card representing death. So peaceful, so desperate.
That gaze, transcending the boundaries of time and life and death, turned to the last person who was still concerned about George.
Although, it's too late.
Whether or not George actually committed suicide may no longer matter. When his mother held on to his death just to extort a pension, his fiancée wasn't grieving his death at all, just angry that he didn't get an inheritance, only kid fans were in a bad mood for his death but But when he committed suicide using Nazi German guns, death may have been a long-lost relief for George.
At the end of the movie, Louis packs himself up and parks in front of his wife's house, and his son finally walks towards his father: hope is rising, but does this hope really save Louis?
We don't know, but as long as there is family to worry about, death will never be a relief.
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