A Single Man Review
Posted by Erik Luers on 12.17.2009
A day in the life of a man named George (tick, tock, tick, tock).........
Colin Firth ... George
Julianne Moore ... Charley
Matthew Goode ... Jim
Jon Kortajarena ... Carlos
Ginnifer Goodwin ... Mrs. Strunk
Texas born fashionista Tom Ford’s A Single Man is about what the death of a loved one can do to your senses. In this modern day and age practice of “tell, don’t show” filmmaking, here is a film which incorporates the viewer into the mind of its main character’s distraught being. Dark thoughts run amuck in George’s (Colin Firth) perception of daily life, and what was once routine for him now appears bleak and grief stricken. Every waking second feels even worse than the last, and what Ford’s film is most commendable for is its style in which George looks back on his relationship with the much younger, Jim (Matthew Goode). Filled with flashbacks (everything in the former couples’ home triggers an important memory), fantasies (George appearing alongside Jim’s dying body on a snowy afternoon after the car crash), and extreme and abnormal closeups (George views life, and people, differently since his lover has passed), A Single Man sheds light on a gay man in the 1960s missing his other half. He has a new perspective on the world, but without who he needs the most, what does it matter? He’s sleepwalking and hallucinating through a twenty-four hour cycle of hellacious despair. The film is operatic in its intensified emotions. It’s no fun being single......or so I’ve heard.
The film opens with a dream — or a nightmare, for people who don’t believe that the dead show up in mere dreams — of George floating lifelessly under ocean water. How do I know it’s ocean water? I don’t. For all I know it is an analogy for the common Christian ritual of baptism, and that George may actually be floating and trapped in a tank somewhere, underneath the ice and his lover's body. The location isn’t as important a factor as the meaning of the tragic scenario. George is confined, perhaps dead, deprived of oxygen. His body does not move; he has given up fighting. We will then see George, above ground, walking towards the scene of Jim’s automobile accident. Jim lays beside the car, bloodied and still, as George lays down and kisses him. And then, in the “real world”, George wakes up.
These are the first clues to George’s new passive nature of being. He is a local college professor, one that doesn’t seem to give a damn about the profession anymore, and he probably feels the same way about his own life. He is figuratively still under water, dead and placed on the outside (or underneath) of human society. He would rather perish and reunite with Jim than live another day as a phony, upper-class, good standing bureaucrat. Everyone sees him, but no one feels the man’s pain. So sad it is.
As viewers, Ford shows us life from George’s eyes, clouded and filled with perverse and erotic rationales. As we see George for the first time, awakened from his horrifying dream, we realize that tonight, of all nights, he will put an end to it all and commit suicide. These are his final hours, and his actions and choices throughout the day will therefore take on a greater, overtly symbolic meaning. A Single Man is his farewell address.
The various closeups Ford uses may seem out of place, but make not mistake about it, they serve a vital purpose. Once instance which particularly stands out involves a pretty young secretary informing George that one of his students has asked for his home address. George looks at the woman’s red lips, her teeth, and her eyes, and we are perhaps taken a little off guard by this seemingly didactic form of voyeurism. What is he distracted by? Why is he so enamored with her facial features? In this writer’s opinion, Ford is showing George observing the opposite sex quite abstractly for the first time in a long while. He has been infatuated and deeply in love with Jim for so long that he has forgotten about the sensuous virtues of women. While he has female friends (one of them, Charley, he even slept with years before), he can't recall the last time he has been this enamored with one. George is attracted to this young woman, and yet that doesn’t necessarily mean he needs to bed her. He isn’t sexually confused, but sexually off.
To reconfirm this theory, let me point out another moment of uncomfortable erotic (and eradicate) behavior. After obtaining personal items from Jim’s safety deposit box, George sits down and notices, via a reflection on the shiny dark floor, a woman’s long legs. We are looking up her blue and white skirt from George’s point of view. Ford then pans the camera slowly up the woman’s skinny legs and the viewer is confused. We finally see the woman’s face, and she is but a young girl of about ten or so, a neighbor of George’s. This makes us feel a little strange ourselves. George’s libido is now undefined, and maybe he is looking for someone to fill the void of Jim.
Later, our leading man meets a young, Spanish James Dean look-alike from Madrid in a liquor store parking lot (in a film filled with poignant closeups, look at the famous one the men converse in front of). He is immensely attracted to him, and the younger rebel without a cause knows this. But there is no time for an easy lay. George’s guilty thoughts of other young men, including a flirtatious, drug selling student whom I will get to in a minute, will lead him to part with this world and spare him the requisite castration. He must repent for his unclean and unfaithful state of mind.
All of the camera work from Ford and his cinematographer, Eduard Grau, is inspired. Is it just artsy for art’s sake? I think the sake of art is a good enough reason to be artsy, but that’s just me. The slow motion pans, the welcoming suburban glow of the exteriors, the handheld “panic” shots in the pouring rain, all help to create a sense of mood that is at times both chaotic and uninhibited. When walking the campus with a student who may or may not be attracted to him, George is offered a pencil sharpener by the boy. They talk about the meaning behind each of the colors and how whichever one they pick will say something about their individual character. The color red means lust and sexual intentions. When the professor and student meet later in a bar, they sit down at a table with red seats surrounded by red walls. Sexual desire is all around them.
Color plays an important role in A Single Man. George, in one scene, comes across a dog which reminds him of one he used to have with Jim. As George pets the dog, the sensuous colors on screen brighten, as if blood is once again running through the man’s veins. Whenever he is reminded of a happier moment between himself and his former lover, the visuals go from drab to overly bright. When George loses energy or the will to live, the colors grow darker and fade out; in a crucial moment late, late in the film, the image is drained to black and white. The visual palettes used in the movie dictate character and characters’ emotional responses.
The performances are excellent, but you’ll be hearing a lot about them in this upcoming awards season, so I won't overkill with praise. Colin Firth, an actor long working his way up the ranks in Hollywood and the United Kingdom, gives an excellent, instantly likable performance in a very tough role. It's more internal than outwardly expressive, and he is quite good at projecting personal anguish. Two of my favorite scenes involving him include the phone call where he is told about Jim's death, and the flashback at the bar where the two would-be lovers meet for the first time. It's a subtle, well versed performance.
Let it also be noted that Matthew Goode more than holds his own up against Firth; his role is much more than a MacGuffin. Jim is the backbone of the story, and Ford keeps bringing us back to this deceased figure. And as Charley, Julianne Moore gives a funny and moving performance that could have been given more time to develop. She represents George's one nostaglic memory of home in England, and I would've liked to have seen her character explored further. Still, Moore is very strong (especially in the scene that takes place on New Year's Eve), and she does a very professional job.
In closing, I think A Single Man is a movie you have to be willing to go along with. Some will be put off by its presentation, but it's the presentation that makes the film truly worthwhile. It's a day in the life of a man who is saying goodbye to his neighbors, his colleagues, his friends, his environment. Not many people knew George very well, and perhaps that made him appear a little cold. He tried to keep his emotions within, but what good can really come of that? In his head, he was screaming, and even at the end of the film, as everything feels right and content with the world, the swell times never last. Ford's film conveys this in remarkable ways, and he ultimately crafts a touching ode to a private man who once lived in a glass house for all to see.
The 411: A Single Man was an unexpected surprise for me, a very strong, stylized film with a lot of heart and passion in its filmmaking. It takes a simple narrative and makes it something more. The presentation makes it alive and new, and this is an excellent debut from neophyte director, Tom Ford. The movie isn't for everybody, but what film is? The acting is uniformly excellent, the cinematography luscious (and rightly so), and the use of diegetic and nondiegetic sound quite unique. See it when it expands on Christmas and bring a loved one, just make sure your somewhat careful on the drive home.
