It's based on another of those Christopher Isherwood stories, vaguely autobiographical, about a posh Englishman in an alien world, this time a gay man in LA in 1962.
As you'd expect of something directed by fash God Tom Ford, it is an immensely (almost achingly) stylish film. But it is so much more than just Mad Men on the big screen (delightful though that might be).
Whichever way you cut it, this is Colin Firth's film rather than Ford's: so wholly does Firth make the lead character his own that it is difficult to imagine any other actor who could carry it off.
Firth spends half his career making rubbishy knockabout films that, presumably, give him a good living (think Bridget Jones and St Trinian's here), and the other half making films of utterly sublime beauty (and I'm not just talking about Another Country or Apartment Zero).
Ford succeeds in making this most beautiful of men look old and tired and drained, but the flashbacks to a happier time a year earlier show us Firth at his most radiant -- something he seems almost to recover in a brief flash at the end of this film.
Firth is always immaculate, and it is his precision that gives some of the most heart-rending moments in the film: to take one example, his insistence that the tie he has selected for his own funeral must be formed in a Windsor knot.
The support cast are superb, too: Julianne Moore, always a Screen Goddess, is here doing a Maggie Smith, chewing up the scenery in the role of a rich, alcoholic English ex-pat.
Matthew Goode is not stretched but delivers a credible object of desire, both in his Navy whites and out of them.
Meanwhile Nicholas Hoult avoids following in the footsteps of Matt Damon's appalling blunder (he crashed into a beach scene in The Talented Mr Ripley displaying a very 1990s abdominal six-pack, absolutely necessary for young male Narcissists today but utterly wrong for the 1950s).
Hoult gives us a sprite, a sex object who may or may not be real, but someone so alive he seems almost able to overcome the depression of our lead.
And that's no mean feat: Firth makes George Falconer's raw grief almost tactile, even though he is apparently so emotionally contained. His grief is vast and incomprehensible -- so much so that the appalling slights of others seem almost as nothing (the family of his dead lover, who exclude him from the funeral; his best friend, who reveals that, at heart, she believes any gay love is less than heterosexual marriage).
If I'm making the film seem grim and relentless, nothing could be further from the truth -- I found it gloriously human, extraordinarily rich in emotion, a film that had me completely contained in its world, oblivious to everything around me.
A Single Man is already a mighty strong contender for my Top 20 films of the second decade of the 2000s. I can praise it no more highly.
7 comments:
I second that. Immensely better than Brokeback M. if I may say so. This is what gay love is really about, not imaginary butch romping in the mountains. A perfect flick. Bravo Tom. Bravo Colin. Bravi tutti.
Tho I have not seen the film yet the sexiest scene is the one where
CF and JK meet by the vending machine and JK exhales the sexiest puff of smoke ever filmed
No it isn't -- the sexiest scene is the exchange of glances in the bar between CF and MG.
Or possibly it's JM putting on her slap.
A brave and often beautiful film indeed. Brave for presenting a practically plotless study of grief, rather than for its portrayal of gay life, I'd say. But the ending (which I won't spoil here) is a huge let-down. I hoped we were past those kinds of films where the gay character has to 'pay' in the end, for the devastating effrontery of simply being gay. Obviously not.
I haven't read the book and I assume that that's Isherwood's ending. It would certainly fit the period - it's as contrived as it is homophobic. It doesn't fit this period, though, and it could so easily have been changed. It's a lesser film because of it.
SPOILER ALERT!
mack: Having taken that line often enough myself in the past, I don't think I agree with you here.
Others do, including some in my party who argued that it was a devastating ending. But for me it was hugely uplifting: he wanted to die, and he died having experienced those sparks of humanity which made him remember the joy and the passion of his life -- he was no longer a walking corpse but a live, complex human.
And the re-appearance of his dead lover as he, himself, died, emphasised their now eternal togetherness. (Not that I buy that sappy Life Hereafter bollocks in reality, but for the purposes of the film's plot...)
Life sometimes sucks. Why should We Gays be immune to that? It's not as if we don't now have enough lovely gay films with lovely happy endings (and no, I don't just mean porn: "Trick", anyone?).
Oh goodness-I have just seen it and was disappointed-perhaps my expectations were too great-it was beautiful-in all respects-tasteful-wonderfully acted-all the portrayals brilliant-and I am sure the period decors were impeccable-well one little thing-men, and I am sure especially Englishmen, did not wear at that time tapered or fitted shirts-a thing of the later '60s. Also two things kept getting to me about Julianne Moore and her performance:her resemblance to the wonderful Samantha Eggars (I am that old)-maybe it's just the freckles-and that her diction was modelled ever so sligtly on Patsy/J Lumley, that classic Chelsea girl. All in all, however the film left me cold. I am fully aware, that by stating this I have committed some form of lêse-majesté and will probably be forever barred from viewing-and commenting on-your blog
It's always a risk when expectations are so high, but I'm sorry it left you cold (some films just do that: I love Todd Haynes' "Safe", but I can see how many would find it utterly freezing).
But no, you're not barred for not liking "A Single Man". Now, if you'd said something horrid about the Midland & Great Northern Railway, well... that would be a whole new kettle of fish.
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