sovay | Oh, children, can't you see I'm sinking like a stone?

Current Music: Billy Bragg, "A Pict Song"

Oh, children, can't you see I'm sinking like a stone?

I feel about Colin Firth in A Single Man (2009) much as I did about George Clooney in Michael Clayton (2007): I would like to see him win Best Actor, because it is no simple trick to inhabit the day-to-day human dimensions of a character without setpieces, but for the same reason he probably won't. Unless their subjects are historical, I don't think the Academy appreciates character studies as much as it should. What I feel stupid about is not realizing until conversation afterward with Eric that A Single Man is also (because the personal is) a political film. A man is grieving for his lover of sixteen years, killed senselessly in a road accident eight months ago and since then every day has been harder and harder to get through: what could be more personal—or more universal—than that? Except that the date is November 30, 1962 and the lover's name was Jim; the airwaves are burning up with the Cuban missile crisis, not the Stonewall Inn. How do you grieve for someone whose existence you are not allowed to acknowledge outside of one friendship and your own crumpling heart? Officially, George Falconer is a single man. Meticulous, well-dressed, a model of slightly ironic English reserve in the college culture of southern California. A lifelong bachelor, his obituary might say. But he's a bereaved widower and it's tearing him apart.¹

I have no idea how closely the film resembles its source novel by Christopher Isherwood, but considered simply as a movie, I think it's one of the best new things I've seen in theaters this year.² The criticism that its style overrides its substance misses the point. The style is entirely in service of placing the viewer inside George's head, his autopilot dissociation from the present that sharpens momentarily into full color as a word, a look, a Krakatoa smog-haze of sunset catches his eye and pulls him briefly into the world, his mounting inability to keep his life with Jim—the sweet and the painful memories both—from bleeding up into the neatly compartmentalized minutiae of his daily routine, even as he prepares to render the whole question moot with an old service pistol and some newly purchased bullets.³ And it shouldn't be, but it's still rare to see a gay character's sexuality treated so matter-of-factly in a mainstream film; I don't have the technical vocabulary to articulate it properly, but the point I want to make is that while the default of the film's world is not gay, the film's default is. The camera is always someone's eye and here it's George's. And the director, Tom Ford, dedicated A Single Man to Richard Buckley, his partner of twenty-three years.

Incidentally, both posters I've seen for the movie are misleading. Julianne Moore's Charley is certainly an important presence in George's life and potentially last day, but the face haunting over his shoulder should have been Matthew Goode's. Jim was not a substitute for anything, do you understand? And there is no substitute for Jim. Anywhere.

1. It is a credit to the film and the actors that although Jim is never onscreen except in dreams and photographs and memory flashes, we understand exactly why George is falling apart without him.

2. I have to specify; I've seen a number of movies in theaters this past year, but most of them were things like Z (1969), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia (1989), The Red Shoes (1948), and M. Hulot's Holiday (1953). All hail art houses.

3. There is a beautifully gallows-funny scene in which George, who desires his suicide to be as orderly, unfussy, and as little in need of clean-up as possible, attempts to figure out how one blows one's brains out without leaving them everywhere. First he tries making a buffer zone out of pillows in bed. This is patently useless. Then he goes to wrap himself in the shower curtain. He slips in the tub. Eventually a sleeping bag is introduced, at which point the phone rings and he has to give up—fighting his way out of the sleeping bag—to answer it. I'm not quite sure what this says about human nature, but I fear it's profound.

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Thank you. Your essays on film are always closely observed, insightful. You connect.

Nine

You connect.

Thank you. Eric agreed with me, so the chances are good that I'm describing the film that actually exists.

I remember hearing about this film--I think a review at the end of Fresh Air. It sounded very good indeed.

--I think a review at the end of Fresh Air. It sounded very good indeed.

I'd been curious about A Single Man since it first came out at the end of last year; I thought it might be something I would like very much, and I suspected (as a fan of the Archers and other filmmakers who don't look like anyone but themselves) that the style would not be a turn-off. I was glad to have guessed right.

I heard an interview with Firth about this film on Radio 4 the other day. In conjunction with your review, it's sold me. Will see!

In conjunction with your review, it's sold me. Will see!

Cool! Let me know what you think!

I must see this.

I must see this.

I hope it's playing somewhere near you: I imagine it would still be visually beautiful on DVD, but of necessity it's the kind of cinematography designed for the immersion of the big screen.

Oh yes, I completely agree. This film is beautifully told in a visual context I'm sure in no small part because the first time director is a fashion designer. But as you say, the reason it is beautiful goes far beyond mere trappings and accessories and is a metaphor for the world that George inhabits, dulled by his irreplaceable loss, dim with grief, except for those moments where life slips in through the cracks and reveals the beauty that once was, infusing the screen with color and light and the lushness of living before fading once again, like the sun slipping behind a cloud. And the context and timing of the film is everything - taking an already tragic event and intensifying it to a knife's edge sharpness. I shed many a tear during that film.

It is a fantastic film and I so hope that Colin will win the Oscar, but I likewise fear that he shall not. Siiiiiiiiigh.

a metaphor for the world that George inhabits, dulled by his irreplaceable loss, dim with grief, except for those moments where life slips in through the cracks and reveals the beauty that once was, infusing the screen with color and light and the lushness of living before fading once again, like the sun slipping behind a cloud.

Yes. Beautifully described. I loved that so much.

It is a fantastic film and I so hope that Colin will win the Oscar, but I likewise fear that he shall not. Siiiiiiiiigh.

I haven't seen Crazy Heart, but I trust

rushthatspeaks when she says that Jeff Bridges was better in Tideland (2005).

As much as I shared your love for Frith's performance, I actually agree with the consensus that Bridges deserves to win. Start with the fact that he does his own singing (and at least faked the guitar playing convincingly) and performs with precisely the correct amount of charisma for his character, a former major country star who is now playing bowling alleys to crowds of thirty or forty. You can imagine the extras who comprised that audience going home and answering the question "so, how was Bad Blake?" with "well, he was drunk as hell and looked like it too, but, actually he was kinda great." I don't think that was easy to pull off and in fact it's profoundly convincing.

When you add that to a non-musical performance that was every bit as convincing as Frith's (and really not too dissimilar, in that the best and most memorable moments are silences and expressionless masks which crack and leak out pain), I have to give him the statue.

Start with the fact that he does his own singing (and at least faked the guitar playing convincingly) and performs with precisely the correct amount of charisma for his character . . . When you add that to a non-musical performance that was every bit as convincing as Frith's (and really not too dissimilar, in that the best and most memorable moments are silences and expressionless masks which crack and leak out pain), I have to give him the statue.

I hope I am misreading you, because the argument you appear to be making I find so incomprehensible, I am not sure where to begin dismantling it. You seem to be arguing that Jeff Bridges and Colin Firth deliver performances of comparable emotional and dramatic impact, but the fact that Bridges can sing gives him a qualitative edge. I don't see why you consider him to have exceeded some sort of standard. The character is a professional musician. The actor portraying him had damn well better be able to sing. The conviction of the performance depends on it. I agree that not all actors are singers and not all singers are actors; someone who can do both equally well in character is formidable. But in a role that requires musicianship, doing your own singing is not something you should win awards for. It's either part of your skill set or it isn't (or you're Rex Harrison, in which case you have the vocal range of a walnut, but it works for you). It wasn't part of Marion Cotillard's skill set and she won for Édith Piaf. Kevin Kline is a far better singer than Cole Porter and so far as I know he wasn't even nominated for De-Lovely. I shall refrain from listing further examples, but I hope you see my point.

You are misreading me, although I could have stated it more clearly. I've seen plenty of actors recently who did their own singing and I've given neither Bridges nor his predecessors extra points for it. I was entirely talking about how precisely he nails the quality of every aspect of the performances. He is playing a guy whom we can tell used to be a completely riveting performer, and now he's old and a wreck but you can see that he used to be great and in many ways still is. It's nuance, body language; it's challenging enough to capture the charisma of a ficticious star but even more challenging when that star is partially but grievously eclipsed.

Think about the emotional complexities of playing to forty people in a bowling alley when you used to play to thousands, and doing it while so drunk that at one ill-timed point you have to leave the stage to vomit. Do you give it your all? Does that fill you with self-loathing, or do you somehow still keep some pride? It would have been so, so easy to play "this guy's not any good any more" and play it for pathos and I think that's the way this script is played 99 times out of 100. To play "in a lot of important ways this guy's still incredibly good" and make that completely believable, that's a rare feat. I have seen that performance (I'm thinking Alex Chilton at the Rat c. 1977) and I recognized it. I hadn't seen it in a movie before, even though I've seen plenty of movies where I should have.

They don't seem to be showing it around here, which is not entirely surprising. Leaving aside the probability of a conservative area of a conservative state showing a quiet movie about a gay man aside, the two movie theaters in the area mostly show blockbuster type movies -- I was surprised when they were showing Ponyo -- I didn't expect that to be here either.

Leaving aside the probability of a conservative area of a conservative state showing a quiet movie about a gay man aside, the two movie theaters in the area mostly show blockbuster type movies -- I was surprised when they were showing Ponyo -- I didn't expect that to be here either.

I hope Netflix is your friend. Also that whoever decided to show Ponyo doesn't go anywhere in the next four years.

Ponyo is up for an Oscar for Best Animated Film. Lots of theaters bring back Oscar nominated movies right before the Oscars if they are still available. :)

Sure, but they were showing it last summer when it came out.

So the question then becomes, have they been showing it all this time, or did they bring it back because of the Oscars? Doesn't generally matter if the theater showed the movie before or not. They know that they can make money showing an Oscar nominated movie because all of the people who didn't see it the first time will be curious to see it now since it's up for an Oscar.

Oh, sorry-- I meant that they were showing it last summer, but not since then.

Ahhhhhhh! Gotcha. Well, maybe because it was one of the rare children's films out these days (or those days) would be my guess. ;) I think A Single Man is probably considered more 'art house' in the end. More's the pity.

Jim was not a substitute for anything, do you understand? And there is no substitute for Jim. Anywhere.

Thank you, especially for those last two sentences.

Thank you, especially for those last two sentences.

Well, they're not mine; they belong to George. But you are welcome.

I'm looking at my spreadsheet which shows the ranking of 2009 movies by mentions on critics' Top 10 lists, and A Single Man is 23rd. I read a dozen reviews last night and all but two failed to mention the variation of color saturation to reflect George's level of engagement, which is a bit like writing a review of Avatar (for a naive audience) without mentioning 3D or CGI. I suspect that many critics went in assuming the movie would have more style than substance based on the director's background and inexperience and thus dismissed it as a stylistic gimmick, as astonishing as that sounds. But then again, many critics (probably the same ones) dismissed the backwards structure of Memento as a gimmick. Of course both devices are brilliant innovations designed to give the viewer the same subjective experience as the protagonist. (And it occurs to me now to wonder whether these are the same critics who seem to believe that their own experience of a film is in some ways objective.)

My list-making brain ranks it as my 5th most pleasurable new-movie experience of the year (after Avatar, Up in the Air, Inglourious Basterds, and Precious) but of those movies only Up in the Air surpasses it as a movie I would like to own on DVD and none approaches it as a movie for which I would desire a thorough 60-minute making-of documentary. And I wonder whether this is the start of a great career for Tom Ford, or whether it was a singular product of a lifelong obsession.

I understand that the intended suicide is an addition by the screenwriters, and it is singularly brilliant, because it turns every moment of George's day into the sort of moment he would remember for, well, the rest of his life. That allows the entire movie to operate at a level of heightened intensity that would be unendurable if George weren't frequently disengaging.

The film is accompanied by a glorious score by the Polish composer (and former Penderecki pupil) Abel Korzeniowski which failed to win a deserved Oscar nomination (let alone a a statue). I suspect some of that comes from being a Hollywood outsider, but mostly I think it's because his peers don't go for this style of score, which makes no attempt to punctuate the drama and never tells you what to feel, but instead provides a separate aesthetic experience in parallel and complement to the visual imagery. This, by the way, is one of several ways the film reminded me of last year's Revolutionary Road, and I can't think of a stronger If You Loved X Then You'll Love Y recommendation among recent movies (except to the blog owner, whose reasons for loving movies are preternaturally less superficial, but I certainly think it's worth a shot).

all but two failed to mention the variation of color saturation to reflect George's level of engagement

Which reminds me: the process used by Roger Deakins on 1984 is called bleach bypass.

I suspect that many critics went in assuming the movie would have more style than substance based on the director's background and inexperience and thus dismissed it as a stylistic gimmick, as astonishing as that sounds.

I don't think the explanation can be quite that simple, or you might have seen a similar dismissal of Gone Baby Gone based on its equally untried director and his wobbly taste in roles; I'm more inclined to believe that style in films is subject to the same unfounded assumptions about transparency as style in prose. I should look at the reviews for the original Insomnia (1997) and see what reviewers made of its visual style, full of blips and skips and washed-out white dissolves at the edges of vision: it's another subjective experience, in this case the film's title. Perhaps that's more aesthetically acceptable because the audience is warned going in?

and none approaches it as a movie for which I would desire a thorough 60-minute making-of documentary.

Maybe Criterion will fall in love with it. They released a DVD of Armageddon, so God knows almost any film of the present day has a more deserving shot at the same treatment.

And I wonder whether this is the start of a great career for Tom Ford, or whether it was a singular product of a lifelong obsession.

Selfishly, because I would like more films from someone with such a detailed and striking eye, I very much hope the former. I don't want to him to be one of these astonishing one-offs like Charles Laughton and The Night of the Hunter.

That allows the entire movie to operate at a level of heightened intensity that would be unendurable if George weren't frequently disengaging.

Might still be anyway; see

mamishka's comments. But, yes. I don't disagree with the introduction of the suicide at all.

The film is accompanied by a glorious score by the Polish composer (and former Penderecki pupil) Abel Korzeniowski which failed to win a deserved Oscar nomination (let alone a a statue).

Agreed. I do not respond to a lot of movie scores, but I would listen to this one as writing music; it was beautiful, it did not interfere (which cannot be said about Philip Glass' score for Notes on a Scandal, for example), and I suspect it enhanced the film in ways I haven't identified because they didn't hit me over the head. I would like to have seen it at least given a chance at competition.

I suspect some of that comes from being a Hollywood outsider, but mostly I think it's because his peers don't go for this style of score, which makes no attempt to punctuate the drama and never tells you what to feel, but instead provides a separate aesthetic experience in parallel and complement to the visual imagery.

Explain. I agree that it's not the kind of score that handholds the emotional tone for the audience, but how much would you divorce the two?

This, by the way, is one of several ways the film reminded me of last year's Revolutionary Road, and I can't think of a stronger If You Loved X Then You'll Love Y recommendation among recent movies (except to the blog owner, whose reasons for loving movies are preternaturally less superficial, but I certainly think it's worth a shot).

So noted. Revolutionary Road did not look at the time like a film that interested me much, but I will consider it.

I don't think the explanation can be quite that simple, or you might have seen a similar dismissal of Gone Baby Gone based on its equally untried director and his wobbly taste in roles

World of difference. There's a ton of precedence for actors who turn director getting industry praise for their debuts, e.g. Robert Redford winning the Oscar for Ordinary People or Kevin Costner doing the same for Dances With Wolves. In fact, I think the response to GBG was largely that Ben belongs behind the camera and Casey in front of it. Ford was a complete industry outsider, so far less would be expected of him. And if a critic is going to make assumptions, it's "at least the performances should be solid" versus "at least the suits will look sharp."

I agree that it's not the kind of score that handholds the emotional tone for the audience, but how much would you divorce the two?

Quite a bit, actually. But I'm not sure I can explain it much further, except to note that you singled it out as music that would function on its own without the movie. That's exceedingly rare. Even my favorite film score of all time, Howard Shore's magnum opus for The Lord of the Rings (the Gondor theme is playing in my head now) -- if you heard that score in isolation I think you'd guess it was a film score and you would correctly identify the function of the themes; you would recognize the Saruman / Uruk theme as belonging to the bad guys, the Shire theme as relating to countryside, the Rohan and Gondor themes as two varieties of heroic. I think the soundtrack for this movie could successfully be passed off as symphonic.

This should interest Little Springtime, too. I look forward to seeing it.

I'm not quite sure what this says about human nature, but I fear it's profound.

Made me smile.

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Oh, children, can't you see I'm sinking like a stone?

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