A Single Man
Set in a world of pink skies and orange moons, A Single Man is a veritable rainbow of astonishing beauty. The world is actually 1962 Los Angeles, but fashion designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford knows how to paint a picture of the familiar and make it look entirely new. This is not like any version of Los Angeles I have ever seen before, which makes sense because Ford seems to operate from a place of extreme originality. He directs as though he is inventing a new cinematic language, visually exploring thoughts and ideas, emotions and expressions, with imaginative precision.
Adapting Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel of the same name, Ford and co-screenwriter David Scearce tell the story of professor George Falconer (Colin Firth), a gay man who is still mourning the loss of his lover (Matthew Goode) eight months after a car accident claimed his life. As George explains in his voice-over at the beginning of the movie, he dreads waking up every day to the cold reminder that he is alone. He still goes to work and tries to shuffle through each day, but he fears that he is losing the battle of grief and that suicide may be his only way out.
A Single Man makes no attempt to hide its very upsetting subject matter right from the start, but Ford and Firth navigate the seemingly hopeless corridors of tragedy with such grace and gentle care that the movie's tender intimacy is always inviting. It is a very sad story populated with heartbreak and loneliness, but Ford never wastes a single moment of dramatic intensity on a weepy tearjerker scene. Every emotion is believably realistic and Firth brings such charismatic power to his role that it is impossible to not identify with George as a broken human being.
At no point in the movie does Firth seem as though he is cribbing from some past performance or previous depiction of human suffering. Everything that George experiences feels like it is happening for the first time, because it is emotionally specific to his character. For an actor who always seemed to play the same kind of role in the same kind of way, Firth's brilliant performance in A Single Man may just be the crowning achievement of his career. For me, it is undoubtedly the finest piece of acting I have seen all year.
Firth is front and centre for the entirety of A Single Man, but he is joined by a fantastic supporting cast that includes Julianne Moore as George's boozy friend Charlotte, Nicholas Hoult as George's friendly student Kenny, and Matthew Goode as George's lost love Jim. These three actors are wonderfully cast and Goode especially shines in a series of flashbacks that spill from George's fractured memories throughout the narrative. Because Jim is already gone when the movie begins, our understanding of George's heartbreak grows every time we see the couple interact during one of the flashbacks.
One of the specific aspects of Tom Ford's directorial debut that hugely impressed me on a personal level is how he takes two narrative devices I usually despise (voice-over narration and flashbacks) and makes them both an integral part of the narrative fabric, to the point that the movie greatly benefits from their inclusion. While some filmmakers have illustrated a grand ability to use voice-overs and flashbacks, I often find they are used as dramatic filler to support a weak narrative. But Ford puts us inside George's head, so we feel his pain from within and yearn for the days when he was perfectly happy reading a book with Jim sitting nearby.
A Single Man is a movie of such eye-popping beauty that I can barely find the words worthy of describing its exquisite opulence. Ford approaches each scene with an astonishing attention to detail and his meticulous composition makes every frame of the movie look like an individual work of art. Eduard Grau's sumptuous photography is so deeply delicious that I wish I could devour every image. From now on, when I think about cinematic eye candy, Grau's unforgettable achievement will forever leap to my mind.
Tom Ford fills every aspect of his movie with such startling beauty and deliberate wonder that it is difficult to comprehend how he was able to keep track of so many elegant elements. In addition to the amazing acting and the pristine photography, Abel Korzeniowski's musical score adds so much dramatic energy to George's journey. A Single Man is a movie that I cannot praise enough. I feel like I need to create new adjectives to accurately describe its hypnotic qualities. But for now, let me just say that Ford's directorial debut moved me like few movies have in a long time, that Firth's performance is phenomenal, and that I will never forget the perfect beauty of a pink sky and an orange moon.
