Review: A Single Man

I'm not handsome enough to see this movie, I had to sneak in.

Submitted by mike, 12/11/09 4:45 PM

Fashion all-star Tom Ford’s directorial debut is an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s landmark novel A Single Man. Set in 1962 (and brought to life by the production design crew responsible for the razor-sharp Mad Men series), the film stars Colin Firth as George, a gay English professor living in Santa Monica, trying and failing to deal with the loss of his lover of 16 years. He visits with his friend up the road, the similarly bereft Charley (Julianne Moore), and is pursued by a student, the young Kenny (Nicholas Hoult).

Deeply romantic and with an absolutely vicious attention to period detail, Ford’s film at time seems like a (surprisingly pleasant) extension of a mid-90’s cologne ad into an hour-and-a-half-long film. Everyone in it is physically stunning, occasionally to the point of distraction as I’m not sure they made men as waifishly thin as the Prada-ad model-gaunt liquor-store parking lot boy in cuffed jeans George runs into. George’s apartment and car and clothes are all precise and perfectly tailored and matte and incredibly expensive – we are to assume that George’s deceased partner was the breadwinner, I assume – and he moves through it with the preoccupation and handsome distraction of a man remembering an old lover’s smell. George lies in a flashback in ridiculous repose on a jagged German Expressionist rock, an afternoon dalliance in the desert of sad memories or something like that. It gets a little ridiculous, but in the exact absolutely pleasurable way that fashion photography is ridiculous. If I knew George, I’d find him insufferable. I’d much rather be George.

Ford and Firth’s quiet, lush detailing of George’s desperate grief attacks head-on the issue of gay rights by being adamantly anti-polemical. That George is gay is both intrinsic to the story and utterly inconsequential: aside from being beautiful and looking like it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars his sadness is normal, and ordinary, and real, and that Firth manages it so well is unsurprisingly the true grace of the film. He is one of the best actors working, and is perfect in the role. The effectiveness of Ford’s film rests entirely on Firth, and his subtlety is perfect. 

It’s slow, and measured and at times, it’s dull, Ford’s film reawakens what’s become lately an unfortunately idle idea in cinema: that there is pleasure to be found in looking at handsome people. Firth, looking thinner than normal, is jaw-droppingly handsome, in his narrow suit and big glasses, in his nice car and beautiful home. There are moments in the film, such as the one when George sits looking into the smoggy sunrise that are as true in a way to the heart of cinema, the heart that’s not voyeuristic but artistic and beautiful, in a way that has been almost forgotten. 8/10