A Single Man
Sophie Cunningham
March 07
I find that you often don’t know what something has meant to you - a painting, a story, a film – until long after you've seen or read it. This is, I think, what Jane Gleeson-White touches on in her recent post for Overland. I’m interested in how we respond and act as that audience. Can art move us so deeply it makes us act? Can art change lives?’
For example, I thought I hated Cronenberg's Crash but the way that the film kept niggling at me made me realise that it had had a more visceral effect than I’d realised. And, as I often say when teaching editing, a perfectly written story can end up feeling as if it's all surface, and a shambolic one can really haunt you. Ideally, of course, we want our art to be both impressively put together and to haunt us.
A Single Man is a film that works on all these levels. It also, unnervingly, feels traumatic while watching it, but in the remembering feels lighter and lighter: it’s a very positive film.
Based on the novel of the same name, written in 1964 by Christopher Isherwood, it takes us through a day in the life of George Falconer. He is contemplating suicde, but Falconer’s engagement with the details of the day to day world – the ripple of muscle on a man’s chest as he plays tennis, the smell of perfume, toast, the flight of an owl, the glimpse of a full moon, love for close friends – are so intense, so present, one genuinely has no idea if he will follow through on his plan to kill himself. This creates a very real tension despite the lack of big dramatic moments in the plot.
Isherwood was very interested in Buddhism and I could see this very clearly in the film - indeed, it was this attention to being 'present', which made the film so special. The director Tom Ford, is a fashion designer and his wonderful eye for detail to give this film a visual texture and depth which works away on the audience in some more profound way as well as being extremely pleasurable.
One of the reasons for Falconer's grief is that his partner, Jim, has died (you see this in the first frame of the film), and, much as their love was invisible so is Jim's death. Falconer has to go through the facade of everyday teaching with people who don't know he's gay and are oblivious to his pain. Colin Firth is a total knock out as Falconer and really gives himself over to this both very British and very sensuous character. Nicholas Hoult is also fantastic as Kenny, a young student of Falconer's who seems to be one of the few people to pick up on Falconer's pain.
As awesome as Juliannne Moore's character is, to look at the film posters, and to watch the trailer (above) you'd think the film was about a love affair between her character Charley and Falconer. It's not - though their scene does capture something of the wonderful (and sometimes painful) intimacy possible between men and women when they aren't, in fact, going to be lovers. The dance scene between them is way hotter, and more amusing, than the famous Travolta/Thurman routine in Pulp Fiction). However, given the subject of the invisibility of gay love, especially back in the early 60s, it's very frustrating to see the promotion of the film as a film in which heterosexual relations are important. To be blunt, they're not, and this image from the film captures the homoerotic mood of the film far more successfully.
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Comments
07 Mar 10 at 10:04
"For example, I thought I hated Cronenberg's Crash but the way that the film kept niggling at me made me realise that it had had a more visceral effect than I’d realised."
You thought you hated it? God, you sound like a teenage girl not sure whether she looks good in a dress or not.
You should have trusted your instincts the first time round. The only thing niggling you was the conflict between a great director and the utter drivel that was "Crash", (and perhaps a niggling sense that maybe you didn't get it).
There was nothing to get. Everyone makes mistakes.
...07 Mar 10 at 12:59
Thanks for the patronising comments about teenage girls and dresses, but i actually do think that thinking about something for a while can change your mind. I stand by my comments -on reflection I thought Crash was a good film.
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