Fassbender's films are not pleasant because he is too direct and sharp. He always places characters in unsolvable predicaments and is extremely keen to expose the unbearable truths of life. Through The Merchant of Four Seasons, Fassbender was able to spread his desperate outlook on life to worldwide acclaim. Interestingly, instead of walking the red carpet and interviewing the media, he prefers to silently get himself drunk at a cocktail party (similar to the fruit seller Hans), which may be why fans always like to associate his shocking personal experience with his works. .
Hans is a prisoner of time. "Four Seasons Merchants" comes from the French idiom "un marchand des quatre-saisons", which refers to traders who sell fruits and vegetables. The fruit sold varies with the seasons, but no matter how time ticks through the sale of pears and plums, it is static for Hans because he is always imprisoned in painful memories. Through five flashbacks, Fassbender reveals the root cause of Hans's destruction - cold and powerful mother, deposed decent job (police), unfulfilled desire to become a mechanic, unfulfilled love, military service The torture and torture of captives. Whenever he is frustrated in real life, Hans will recall the past and fall into an inescapable regret and annoyance. He can only use alcohol to numb himself; but the sad thing is that these unbearable past and pain have been imprinted on the time scale. Back and forth, alcohol has also become an accomplice of time.
Hans is a prisoner in space. A close-up of Hans' face confines it to the frame while selling fruit; Fassbender repeatedly places Hans in a framed frame - in a window frame on an interior wall when delivering fruit to a lover, When selling fruit, his head is in the stone gate with blurred background. After sobering up, he calls for his wife in the narrow toilet. When he goes to his mother's house to pick up his wife and daughter, he stands in the door frame, and Hans stands behind his back in front of the window after his helper reveals that his wife has an affair with him. And then became silent and often bowed his head in front of the window. Fassbender highlights Hans' dilemma in family and marriage through scenography and compositional design. The three major physical conflicts all happened at home - Hans drunk and beat his wife, his wife decided to divorce and Hans had a heart attack, and his helper beat Hans wife and exposed the relationship between the two. The supposedly intimate and warm environment has become a stage for violence, calculation, contempt and betrayal.
Hans is a prisoner of class identity and a prisoner of others. At the beginning of the film, Hans's overhead shot of selling fruit and the overhead shot of the customer's (lover's) subjective point of view reveal the underlying identity of the fruit seller and the difference between the two classes. The middle-class mother firmly opposes Hans being a mechanic and is ashamed of her status as a fruit dealer. The lover's father opposes her daughter marrying the fruit dealer Hans. Unable to satisfy her personal pursuit of career and love, Hans is in an unsolved predicament. Undoubtedly, Fassbender is pessimistic about human agency and satirizes and criticizes the law of the jungle, which sacrifices individual freedom for social development and worldly success.
Hans became redundant, his presence dispensable. In the eyes of his mother, he is a disgrace to the family, far inferior to the excellent son-in-law and the neighbor's child who died in the war; in the eyes of his wife, his silence and decadence are symbols of cowardice and irresponsibility; in the eyes of his comrades-in-arms Harry, he is a funny clown and A replaceable father. Death is the best relief for Hans. Near the end, Hans walks away from home and sits down by the river. The melodious and soothing soundtrack is his inner echo, and he is ready. After the cruel and hypocritical dinner at his mother's house, Hans went to death with determination and resistance, achieved self-destruction by drinking alcohol hard, and at the same time gave the most tragic and violent response to the predicament of "existence".
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