by Douglas Messerli
Tom Ford and David Scearce (screenplay, based on a novel by
Christopher Isherwood), Tom Ford (director) A Single Man / 2009
Tom Ford's first feature film, A Single Man, is a beautiful and intentionally
serious work, presenting the last day in a literature professor's life. George
Falconer (brilliantly played by Colin Firth) is a gay man who has lost his
lover, Jim (Matthew Goode), in an accident, and has since that time lost
himself to grief, stumbling through the early 1960s society (the Cuban Missile
Crisis of October 1962 is played in the background a of couple of times during
the film's action) like a dead man walking, unable to connect with his neighbor,
the Strunks, with three somewhat obnoxious children; with his students, to whom
he attempts to teach Aldous Huxley's novel After
Many a Summer Dies a Swan, a book, appropriately about death and longevity;
or to reconnect with his close woman friend, Charley (Julianne Moore). It is a
time when being gay, particularly for a careful and slightly fastidious man
like George, is not openly shared; and after having had sixteen apparently
happy years with his companion, he is quite frankly all alone in life, a man
who at times feels truly singular, if not entirely "single."
To increase the
drama of his film version of Isherwood's 1964 novel, Ford has slightly altered
the plot so that on this particular day, the day we follow his actions from
waking up until his death, George has determined that he will kill himself,
ending his utter loneliness and, as he wryly describes his New Year's
resolution to Charley, to put to rest the things of the past.
One of the
important elements of Isherwood's fiction was, that despite his homosexuality,
George was, in fact, an average person, an intelligent ordinary man, whose loss
of love had simply led to a great emptiness. And Ford, given the strength of
Firth's performance, also attempts to capture that ordinariness. Everything
George does during the day, with a couple of exceptions, is set to pattern. As
he drives past the play-gun of the neighborhood boy, he cocks his finger and
shoots back, he briefly drinks coffee in the faculty lounge before facing his
disinterested students, he shops for a bottle of gin Charley has begged him to
bring to her party that night, he visits the local bank.
The trouble is
that Ford has so beautifully and precisely framed these events, carefully
dressing his characters and sets, stunningly lighting his stylish designs, and
choosing some of the most beautiful people to portray his odd assortment of
figures that he renders George's great angst nearly meaningless. Accordingly,
it is hard for the audience to share that character's desolate state of mind.
Yes, George's
great love of life has disappeared. The homophobia of the period underlining
his lover's death is quite clearly established: he is secretly called by a
family friend who reports Jim's death, telling him, in no uncertain terms, that
the funeral will be a family-only affair, disinviting the most loved
"family" member of the deceased.
And, in her
attempt to woo him back (Charley and George once had a temporary fling),
Charley reveals the sensibility of the time, characterizing George's and Jim's
shared life as "not a real relationship." We certainly understand,
accordingly, his isolation with regard to the society of the day. As a gay man,
as Jim proclaims, and later, as his student reminds him, George is
"invisible."
Yet George lives
in one of the most beautifully moderne
houses possible, all windows and sleek lines. He dresses in well-designed
suits. He is helped in his daily chores by a maid. He works only a few hours a
day teaching the literature that he, if not his students, most loves. He is
adored by his friend Charley, who lives only a few houses away. He drives a
Mercedes. It is a bit difficult, given his quite luxurious life to fully
comprehend his endless languor.
On the day of
his intended suicide, moreover, his student, the radiantly fresh Kenny (played
by the photogenic Nicholas Hoult) openly flirts with him. A stunningly handsome
Spanish James Dean look-a-like (played by startlingly beautiful model Jon
Kortajarena) is ready to jump into his car and bed if he wants. And then
there's the sky, the glorious sunset over the city of Los Angeles! We are told,
of course, that sometimes the most beautiful things are dangerous; that
incredible sunset, after all, is a product of pollution, while in the
background is a poster for Hitchcock's Psycho.
George is apparently in danger, despite all these lovely trappings.
Yet it is hard to
completely square Ford's carefully choreographed picturesque sets with the
despair George seems ready to embrace. Were it not for Firth's intense
commitment to the role, we might break out laughing, as the audience almost
does—this humor intentionally sought—when George tries to find a comfortable
spot and position in which to shoot himself in the mouth. Fortunately, after
thrashing about like a just-caught fish in a sleeping blanket, he fails to find
the level of comfort necessary for the act.
After a lovely dinner and intense argument
with Charley, George returns home, now more than ever determined to end it; but
he still cannot get up the courage. Out of liquor, he runs to the local bar, a
kind of gay-straight joint on the nearby beach, wherein awaits his student
Kenny.
The two now
attempt a game of trying to find just how far the other will go, until they
discover themselves swimming naked in the ocean and return home to George's
intended house of horrors. Despite the sexual overtones, or even
"overtures," no actual sex occurs as George, exhausted by his games,
falls asleep after nights of lying awake. He awakens to find Kenny asleep in
the other room, guarding the discovered handgun within his blankets to protect
the older man. George steals it away from the sleeping angel, locking it up.
Suddenly, he has
come through, as D. H. Lawrence might have put it, he has reconnected with a
person—an action which Ford heavy-handedly reiterates time again throughout the
film by transforming the color of George's skin from gray to a warm
yellow-brown whenever he makes close human contact—bringing him a moment of
clarity. As George opens the patio door to look at the stars, an owl flies up.
Abandoning wisdom and its attendant reservations, George has been redeemed and
saved.
But life is not
like the movies, particularly not Ford's near-perfect universe; as George
returns with his newfound happiness to his bedroom, he falls dead of a heart
attack, an irony that almost redeems the film.
Los Angeles,
December 16, 2009
Reprinted from World
Cinema Review (December 2009)
Reading
Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).
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