Review: A Single Man (2009)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                          A SINGLE MAN
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: A day in the life of a man in deep depression.
     Directed by first-timer Tom Ford and based on a short
     novel by Christopher Isherwood, A SINGLE MAN gives us an
     up-close and very personal look at a college professor
     who recently has lost the meaning of his life when he
     lost his gay lover.  We follow him through a single day
     as he looks just once more for love and for life or the
     strength to end it all.  There are good performances by
     both Julianne Moore and Colin Firth.  Rating: +1 (-4 to
     +4) or 6/10

A spoiler follows the main body of the review.

For George Falconer (played by Colin Firth) each new day is an
ordeal--living in agony and in L.A.  He starts the day putting on
the right fashionable clothing that he uses like a mask to hide the
pain going on inside him.  He looks longingly at a gun and the
escape that it could bring.  George was deeply and profoundly in
love for many years with the handsome and callow Jim (Matthew
Goode), but Jim died in a car crash on an icy road and George's
life just crumbled.  Now he is going through the motions of his
day.  He teaches his class in literature and almost by habit
notices the good-looking men he sees around him.  He goes to a
liquor store and sees another hunk there.  On the other hand the
women around him seem just collections of pieces to him.  The
camera suggests that he cannot even look at women as whole people.
When he sees them he sees their hair or their mouths or their
eyes--especially their eyes.  He is out of touch with people and
living within his mind.  The camera captures his mind fog with slow
motion close-ups of people he does not really care about.  In other
films this same camera technique has been used to show people who
are drugged.  And it is showing him almost in the same state.

There is no love left in George.  The last living person whom
George cares about was his long-time friend, Charley (Julianne
Moore with a fairly convincing British accent).  If George could
have loved a woman it would have been Charley.  He even gave it a
try once, but when it failed it really ruined both lives.  Charley
is now always either mostly drunk or fully drunk.  She still sees
George for friendship or dinner, but she is only teasing herself.

Colin Firth seems to have made his reputation mostly playing solid,
prosperous "Mr. Right" types like the two Darcys in PRIDE AND
PREJUDICE and BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY.  Tom Ford co-authored the
screenplay as well as directed the film, his first.  His real
business is as a fashion designer.  His visual sense can be seen in
George's unrealistically fabulous house.  Just where George gets to
wherewithal for a house like this on a college professor's salary
is open to conjecture.  The film has technical problems.  We are
told that it is taking place on November 30, 1962, but the
television tells us that Cuban Missile Crisis is occurring.
Actually the crisis ended October 27th.  We are told that George
and Jim had been together for something like fifteen years, but
they appear not to have aged at all since they first met, as we see
in flashback.

This film is based on a short novel by Christopher Isherwood whose
book I AM A CAMERA was made into a film and then remade as a play
and a film as CABERET.  Curiously, he also wrote the screenplay for
the TV miniseries "Frankenstein: The True Story."

This is a film of gay angst.  There are some directors who might
have tried to make a statement that George's pain is at root caused
by intolerance.  Tom Ford does not do that.  Instead we just seem
to have two people, George and Charley, who are just plainly
dysfunctional.  They are free to make their own mistakes, and they
really do make them.  I would rate this film a +1 on the -4 to +4
scale or 6/10.

Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler... Spoiler...
The ending of the film is telegraphed.  Early in the film we see
George has a physical problem that seems independent of all his
other problems.  That then is dropped until the very end.
Curiously enough it makes the whole film a variation on a familiar
O Henry story.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1315981/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1218217-single_man/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2010 Mark R. Leeper