A Single Man

As soon as I first saw its trailer, I was attracted by the film. The film is directed by a fashion designer, Tom Ford, who made his directorial debut with this dramatic outing starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, and Matthew Goode. Ford and David Scearce adapted the story from a book by Christopher Isherwood, which tells the tragic tale of a professor's loss of his longtime partner.

The time is in 1962 and Colin Firth is a gay college professor whose longtime lover has died in a car accident. Still grieving the loss, he spends a full day moving through Los Angeles with one destination in mind: his own heartbroken suicide. Along the way he lectures his students, meets a hustler, encounters his routinely homophobic neighbors, methodically ties up loose ends, and dines with his boozy pal Julianne Moore and then skinny dips with a flirtatious male student. That he does all this wearing an impeccably tailored suit and living in an astoundingly cool, glass-walled, Mid-Century Modern home, makes you feel only slightly less sorry for him and his melancholy state.

"A Single Man" is told from the point of view of its hero, George (Colin Firth), the single man. He is single because he's unmarried and single because he's homosexual. It has been eight months since his lover died, and he still grieves. He is empty. His only friendship is with Charley (Julianne Moore), a sad alcoholic of a certain age with whom he once, briefly, had a try at a heated affair. She gives him gin and sympathy, but it's more ritual than comfort. She tries to kiss him, says maybe "we could still make a go of it," but that's a lie neither one believes.

The film follows the stylish, impeccably dressed Firth as he goes about his daily routine and lays the groundwork for his impending suicide. Firth wants everything to be in place when he exits the earth; in his mind, death via self-inflicted gunshot need not be sloppy or disorganized. But life has a way of messing up even the best-laid plans.

After seeing the movie, I was so impressive by the sorrow of George. Hemingway wrote something that returns to my memory from time to time: "Isn't it pretty to think so." Never mind what he was referring to. The words apply for me to those situations where we imagine the reality to be quite different than it really is. Perhaps our imagination is a protective strategy, and it may work for George.