"A Single Man" (2009) - Movie Review

It is a nightmare to lose a lover but to deal with it alone is hitting the wall and believing it is the only solution. Such is George Falconer (Colin Firth) as the titular man. He comes as one being steady as a still water and muddled all inside. Colin Firth whom I never really taken seriously wants me to. Written for the screen by director Tom Ford and David Scearce based on a novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood, “A Single Man” is a tragic noir love story, if that tells you something.

George has lost his lover Jim (Mathew Goode) to a terrible accident and now is considering the reason for continuing his existence in the midst of 60s nuclear end. Living in Southern California, there is lag in the sense of time from the moment he wakes up. His dreams considers of close encounters with the dead Jim. George lives in a neighbourhood where opposite lives the role model family of the times, Susan (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her family. Nearby is also George’s lonely friend Charley (Julianne Moore). This is the day he wants to get by.

In this film Tom Ford gives the background of the time when world is believed to meet its end. In that, George wanting to die does not even connect to it. As if his day happens in a calendar of his own and it involves passing people and drifting conversations he can choose and dispose. Everyone sees the underlying fear of distress bursting out in him but they are used to it for a while. Clean, arranged and articulate, it is not a surprise to see him as the Professor of English.

When you live alone, smaller things gets better details. The lace which slides on the side you wish it would have and there is a philosophy in arranging things on a table. George has flashbacks on the pockets of memories through the place they cuddled and the people they talked through this day. He packs things for his college with an Aldous Huxley novel and a gun with no bullets. Everything has an unfinished poetry to it in this film.

Tom Ford focusses on this man so intensely. He makes it so when he conducts the class, we see few students getting their faces seen. George vanishes into the thoughts but the sense in the current world takes the view points of a student crowd as it should, insignificant in front of his sorrow. One student brings his complete attention by saying that the novel seems to say Huxley is an Antisemite for which George gives a remarkable opinion. In that there is a student Kenneth (Nicholas Hoult) who has and wants to communicate to the lacerated man inside this immaculately attired man.

When someone thinks of the moments that can never be recreated, even the worse fights appear as a beautiful remembrance of them. George and Jim did not have fights but a discussion clearly getting through to each other. In between them comes the history of Charley, a friend George has slept with but cannot fall in love with. George has dinner, drinks and some cherishing memories with Charley before deciding to pull the trigger.

“A Single Man” presents the ending and discovers the life of a man in pain and sorrow in a single day. His loneliness is not mentioned because his glass house is filled with thoughts. He has faint hope of substitutes or the opportunities of recuperation has only left with him more self pity than a chance to live forth. In this vastness he is going to figure his life out or may be not, but till he does, we like the people he talks and the Jim he sees.

Tom Ford is obsessed with this man for this day. Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Mathew Goode are intimate in the words they spill and the comedy of each other’s lives they scatter around. George is not alone dealing with the loss but the possibility of never finding another love in the more conservative times of the America. With several undertones, emotions, interesting conversations, “A Single Man” is a bitter sweet film.