A Single Man

The Husband & I do not often have a day off together, & so yesterday, I took a day off work so that we could have a nice Wednesday of connecting with a movie & lunch. So civilized & restrained, sort of like George Falconer, the English literature professor at a Los Angeles college in the early 1960s, who is adrift in a world of sun dappled Southern California sensuality. The rose blossoms blaze with surreal heat; & the bored students in his classroom are achingly pretty. George, a dapper, & because it is 1962- a closeted gay man, sees it all through eyes clouded with grief & loneliness. A late night a phone call announced the death of his longtime partner in a car crash. The voice (in a nice touch, the voice belongs to Mad Men’s Jon Hamm) on the line explained that George is excluded from the funeral. It's "for family only." Pain creases George's face but his voice remains steady. The tears don't begin until the phone is hung back up.




"Just get through the goddamn day," George tells himself next morning in the bathroom mirror. He dresses in his fastidiously, impeccable suite & tailored shirt. He heads to work with a loaded revolver in his briefcase. He's all dressed up with nowhere to go. A Single Man is the first film directed by fashion icon Tom Ford. It is as gorgeous as you would expect, & surprisingly heartfelt. Dan Bishop's lush production design & cinematographer Eduard Grau's inventive visuals, make every single frame is as sleek as a page from a 1962 GQ layout. The surface effects contribute to the emotionally complex story. Grau's palette shifts from monochromes to vibrant colors depending on George's moods. All the urgent passion he cannot show is expressed in turns of the color wheel. Abel Korzeniowski's score is haunting, evocative of passion & loss.


Adapted from Christopher Isherwood's novella (which reads as an interior monologue), with minimal narration & masterful film technique, Ford tells the story sensitively, but not solemnly. There is dry humor in George's suicidal demeanor. Clocks tick like the toll of funeral chimes, but George’s life keeps handing him reasons to carry on. His attempts to kill himself are continually frustrated. He can't get the bed pillows arranged quite right so as not to make a mess, or there's a distracting knock at the door, or a dinner invitation from his best friend Charley (Julianne Moore), another British expatriate who likes her martinis ("Tanqueray, I like the color of the bottle”), gossip & Booker T's Green Onions on the turntable. George is unsure how to handle the insistent advances of a handsome, sexy, enigmatic student (Nicholas Hoult, the little lad from "About a Boy," all grown up & hunky) & a Spanish would be James Dean (Jon Kortajarena) who tries to hustle him in a parking lot. George's lust & lust for life keep engaging him.


The Husband & I have always championed Colin Firth as an actor. We think he is the best Mr. Darcy ever. Firth is amazing & deeply moving as George. This is his finest performance in a long career of 1st rate work. Gay professional men in the 1960s couldn't wear their hearts on their sleeves. Firth captures George's repression & wounded dignity in a very still performance with deep undercurrents of feeling. His boozy dinner scene with Moore is the film's highlight. Charley & George shared a long ago fling & she still carries a torch for him. The tension between her fiery neurosis and his icy decorum sizzles when they reminisce, flirt & fight as old friends do. It's one of those rare, rich scenes where we have the feeling of eavesdropping on actual friends rather than watching a performance.


It is 1 day later & I can’t shake this film & all of it’s small telling moments: 3 “bad girls” in leather jackets & beehive hair, smoking cigs in the parking lot of the college, the smog pink sky & giant billboard for Psycho at the liquor store parking lot, a scene where George smells the face of a pretty terrier in a parked car, the pretty little neighbor girl who tells George that her father thinks that he is “a little light in the loafers” in a scene at the bank. I was stunned by the film’s beauty & craft, & deeply moved by George’s journey through 1 day, a day he plans to be his last. The Husband smartly remarked- “the moral seems to be: life can be made worth living again by a hot, thin young man with a fine ass.” I think Colin Firth can start practicing some award speeches. Interestingly, I felt that the film took place close to New Years Eve, as George & Charlie discuss resolutions & the neighbors have a large party. Hmmm.