Fashion designer Tom Ford makes a stylishly elegant, most promising feature directorial debut with "A Single Man," a loose adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s seminal, stream-of-consciousness novel of the same title, published in 1964.
Among many distinctions, this impressive film offers Colin Firth one of his best roles in a long time, and a leading one at that. Looking trim, muscled and more attractive than ever before, Firth commands the screen with a bravura, multi-nuanced, tonally perfect performance that should be remembered at Oscar time. (More about the film's Oscar prospects in a later column).
"Single Man" world-premiered to great acclaim at the 2009 Venice Film Fest (in Competition), where Colin Firth deservedly won the acting kudo. The film then played successfully at the Toronto (in Special Presentations), London, and Tokyo Film Fests. The Weinstein Company will release the film on November 30, in time to qualify for Oscar and other awards considerations.
A chronicle of love and loss, life and death, "Single Man" proves that in the right hands even the most challenging and seemingly "unfilmable" text could be made into an intelligent and touching movie. While largely maintaining the novel's spirit, Ford's version also deviates from it in ways that make it more cinematically interesting, by adding new characters, changing existing ones, etc.
It would be unfair to label "Single Man" as an explicitly gay or art film, though it has strong elements of both types of films. Moreover, some purists may object to the excessive stylistic and surreal flourishes, which at times detract from the central story and characters by calling too much attention to themselves. The sequences of men swimming under water in the nude are examples of an overly strong concern with aesthetics and beauty, not to mention the fact that all the characters in the film, especially male but female too, are gorgeously photogenic, with chiseled faces and spectacular bodies.
Nonetheless, in its universal subject, the pain involved in mourning the loss of a loved one, intelligent approach to the material, respect for all the characters, and darkly humorous tone, "Single Man" should go beyond gay audiences to appeal to savvy and sophisticated viewers willing to experience a "different" kind of picture, one that recalls stylish films of the 1960s and 1970s.
The screenplay, co-written Ford and David Scaearce, is mostly witty and authentic, containing many allusions to social and historical events in American society circa 1962, which is the same time period of the hit TV series "Mad Men." The links to this series are also reaffirmed in the similar architecture, production and costume designs, and in the appearance of Jon Hamm as Hank Ackerley.
Set in Los Angeles, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Single Man" is the story of George Falconer (Colin Firth), a 52-year-old British college professor who is struggling to find meaning in his life after the death of his long-time partner of 16 years, Jim (Matthew Goode).
The plot is confined to a single day, punctuated by a series of events and encounters, set in the present and in the past, most of which are quite interesting. A recurrent shot of a clock ticking indicates the changes of time in a tale that could be described as "A Single Day in the Life of a Single Gay Intellectual." Since George is a lit professor who spends half of his time at school, it makes perfect sense to convey, almost hour-by-hour, how his day is spent, including such routine activities as going to the bank.
As we follow George through one day, which is at once routine and eventful, we get a clear sense of a man who dwells too much on the past and is unable see his future, let alone come to terms with the existential dilemma of whether or not there is meaning to life after Jim's death.
George is consoled by his closest friend Charley (Julianne Moore), a 48-year old beauty, who is wrestling with her own questions and doubts about the future. But the central secondary character is a young student of George’s, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult, the child star of "About a Boy"), coming to terms with his own true nature, who stalks George as he feels in him a kindred spirit.
Living a rather orderly life, George goes through the motions of waking up (never good in the morning), interacting with his loyal housekeeper Alva (Paulette Lamori), exchanging polite pleasantries with the Strunks, the all-American family living next door, before driving to work, teaching an English class at a small, unidentifiable college.
Once at school, he buys cigarettes from a machine, engages in a superficial argument about the Cuban Missile Crisis with his colleague (Lee Pace), though clearly he is not a political animal. He then enters into his arena, the classroom, where the nominal subject is Aldous Huxley. Challenged by a student's question, "Was Huxley anti-Semitic?" George quickly changes the topic into a personal, passionate lecture about the meaning of being in a minority position, and mainstream society's fear of and prejudice against all minorities.
George can't help but notice two of his students, both gorgeous, Kenny and his seemingly girlfriend (a blonde who looks a bit like Brigitte Bardot). Making an audaciously aggressive move for the times, Kenny approaches George, supposedly to discuss literature, but the conversation quickly shifts to drugs, music, lifestyle and so on. The perpetual glint in Kenny's eyes, and eagerness to be acknowledged, immediately suggest something deeper and more personal than a purely educational or intellectual interest.
The afternoon proceeds with a chaste encounter with Carlos (Jon Kortajarena), a gorgeously-looking Spanish hustler (a James Dean-look alike) he meets outside the liquor store. Their scene is framed against a huge poster of "Psycho," accompanied to music that recalls the scores of Bernard Herrmann for Hitchcock
He then heads for dinner to the house of his dear confidante and old flame Charley (Julianne Moore, playing a femme of her age), who's dressed and coiffed in swinging London style of the early 1960s. A friend from London, with whom he once had a very brief affair, Charley is now a bitter, alcoholic, desperate divorcee, who has not fully accepted (or digested) the implications of George's sexual orientation. What begins as a series of friendly dances quickly escalates into a desperate pass at George, followed by an inevitable rejection.
Julianne Moore has only one sequence, though she appears briefly in visual vignettes, as when George collapses in her arms after learning of Jim's death. Moore is nonetheless good in the earlier parts of the scene, which is crucial. It is through conversation with Charley that George finally vents his cumulative anger and expresses the frustrations of an openly gay man, a member of a despised, misunderstood minority that society stereotypes and discriminates against. When the tale begins, George is informed via telephone by Jim's cousin of his lover's death, but he is told that the funeral is a "private family affair."
A romantic tale of love interrupted, "Single Man" relates the love affair between George and Jim in non-linear way through brief flashbacks. In the first scene, we see Jim's dead bloodied body, lying on pure snow next to his car, a result of fatal accident due to weather conditions. In later flashbacks, episodes from their joint life are depicted with warmth and credibility, their random yet fateful meeting at a party, how they spent their evenings together in front of the fireplace reading different kinds of books ("Metamorphosis" for George, and Capute's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for Jim).
Unlike most films that use flashbacks in a rather conventional way, "Single Man" inserts George's memories in an imaginative, unpredictable manner, as, for example, fond recollections of the dogs he shared with Jim.
Ultimately, though, the film's portrait of love comes across as too perfect and too idyllic. There are no scenes that reflect tension, anger, or argument. Surprisingly, there is not a single erotic scene to convey the kind of sex George and Jim had.
The above criticism is minor, however. At its best moments, "Single Man" conveys vividly, without any pretense, the isolation that's an inherent part of the human condition, particularly that of a sensitive gay intellectual, who loves America but is still bewildered by the rapid rise of a more crass and mass pop culture. Perhaps more importantly, Ford doesn't neglect the essential humanism that prevails in all Isherwood's work, the importance of the seemingly smallest and most trivial moments in life, such as random encounters.
In one of the film's darkly humorous scenes, George, grieving for his dead lover, contemplates taking his own life. But what specific form will his suicide take? What particular position? With what outfit? Through montage, Ford depicts George's rehearsals of various positions, placing the gun in his mouth, lying down on his bed, leaning against one big pillow, sliding within a sleeping bag, only to discard all of these gestures.
Cast
Credits
A Weinstein Co. release of a Fade to Black presentation, in association with Depth of Field, Artina Film. Directed by Tom Ford.
Production designer, Dan Bishop.
Costume designer, Arianne Phillips.
Sound, supervising sound editor, Robert C. Jackson; sound designer/re-recording mixer, Leslie Shatz. Assistant director, Richard N. Graves.
Casting, Josephn Middleton.
Running time: 99 Minutes.
