Salina Art Center

Based on the lean, compact 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood, first-time director Tom Ford’s film A Single Man focuses on a day in the life of its titular hero, George Falconer.  “Focuses” may not be the proper word: the film scrutinizes George with detached, razor-sharp clarity—as though trying to catch the emotionally reserved protagonist doing something wrong, something incriminating.  The method subtly reflects and amplifies the everyday paranoia that a man like George faced in the early 1960’s.  He is a professor of literature, an Englishman transplanted to the exotic, sunny climate of California, and he is homosexual, at a time when no one dared to come “out.”  George’s emotional repression is a defense mechanism developed over a lifetime of fear and constant sense of alienation.  The mask has become even more brittle because George still grieves for his lover Jim (Matthew Goode), who died eight months before.  His grief is prolonged partly because he can’t express it.  Even the privacy of his home doesn’t make him feel safe enough to let loose.  “Single man” is not just a euphemism for George’s homosexuality but a concise definition of his existence.  His situation becomes more uncomfortable when Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), one of his students, tries to reach out to him—as a friend, mentor, or lover?  George isn’t sure, and doesn’t know how to respond.  Oscar-nominated Colin Firth is absolutely terrific as George.  His challenge is to create a character whose façade is believably perfect to the background characters in the film, yet reveals glimmers of the emotional turmoil he feels beneath.  We sense that George could crack at any moment, but it isn’t overstated.  We believe that George could “fool” most of his students and colleagues—and even himself—but won’t be able to maintain the deception much longer.  This provides an element of suspense, and makes George sympathetic and fascinating.  At times, the fascination seems almost voyeuristic, but the film is touched with such compassion that this character study never becomes cruel.  Even his relationship with Charley, a middle-aged alcoholic and George’s one-time partner in a disastrous attempted heterosexual romance, is presented in a humane manner, where heavier-handed directors might let it become pathetic or even comic.  Indeed, their scenes together—Charley is played brilliantly by Julianne Moore—are ironic yet strangely touching.  There is a common bond between these two lost souls, and moviegoers might wish they could “make a go of it,” as Charley suggests—though the film is too realistic to suggest that’s possible.  The limited 24-hour timeframe favored by Greek tragedy (plus the early appearance of a gun, favored by Chekhov) seem to foreshadow a bleak and violent conclusion, but the film is far more complex than that.  It’s not an overt political statement about the psychic damage that society has perpetrated on homosexuals by forcing them to lead double lives and deny their own feelings (though it’s definitely part of the subtext); the strength of A Single Man is that George’s isolation is readily identifiable to anyone—for him, it’s built upon a specific set of facts: his homosexuality, the time and place in which he lives, his background and upbringing—but Colin Firth makes his character’s sadness universal.  George could be anyone, gay or straight, male or female.  Anyone who has dealt with feelings of anger and fear and bitterness by repressing them so forcefully that they can never be released in a healthy way: who among us can’t identify?  Tom Ford’s debut film is visually beautiful, with just the right level of melancholy: an elegant, haunting meditation upon life, death, and the difficulty human beings have connecting with one another.