A Single Man has several points of entry. You can view it as a visually pristine rendering of middle-class life in 1961 Los Angeles, the ordered quiet before the pending storm of social change. You can view it as a post-World War II portrait of a gay relationship, thriving in its semi-closeted way amid the presumptions and prejudices of the time. Or consider it a career-defining tour-de-force by Colin Firth, a performance made all the more powerful by its nuanced understatement. Trouble is, the movie (and the Christopher Isherwood novel on which it is based) is meant to be an inside look at the unremitting despair and derailment of a man’s life after his lover dies. Yet the sleek, impervious style of the piece keeps us at bay, so that we never quite enter the heart of the story. This is the movie’s chief failing.
George (Firth) is a middle-aged literature professor at a small southern California college. At the start of the film, he is a hollow man going through the motions, relying on habit and routine to hold his days together. Eight months prior, his lover Jim (Matthew Goode) died in a car crash and the happiness they built together is shattered, mocked by the stunning glass house, all modernity and hope for the future, that George must now inhabit alone.
We are treated to scenes of George’s vivid, companionable past (nestled on the couch with Jim and their curled-up fox terriers, like a puzzle with every piece in place) and his colorless, frustrating present (his students just stare at him blankly when he expounds on fear). His life once held many pleasures, most of them emanating from the 16-year love he shared with Jim. Now, his closest comrade-in-arms is his old friend Charley (Julianne Moore), whose own internal crisis echoes George’s. Relocated Londoners both, they’ve leaned on one another over the years and each is mourning a life that is now essentially over.
A Single Man is fashion designer Tom Ford’s first foray into feature-length film and the world he creates is as picture-perfect on the surface as any runway show, from the clean-line mid-century furnishings to the meticulously attired and coiffed characters. As juxtaposition to George’s inner turmoil, this set dressing works well enough. But Ford’s impulses often take him in cool and cold directions and so it is fortuitous and wise that he chose to work with two of the finest warm-blooded actors around. Colin Firth registers every vulnerability and defense with economy and constrained emotion, as if any release whatsoever would be his destruction. (The scene when he hears of Jim’s death is a heartbreak.) Julianne Moore is the very definition of a faded bloom, dressed and made up to vivacious perfection but lifeless inside. They bring a palpable bittersweetness to the movie that cracks its fastidious veneer.
Restraint and order are not bad stylistic choices for a story about a man whose pain lies deep. But reinforced by other distancing devices, like the unnecessary narration at the start and end of the film (when George’s gestures and expressions say everything more immediately than words ever could), claustrophobia becomes the predominant aesthetic. The story doesn’t breath and, in fact, dies a bit.
Occasionally, by serendipity or design, a rush of air enters the action and that is when the most refreshing and moving moments occur—a neighbor’s little girl introduces George to her pet scorpion; an inebriated Charley and an accommodating George rouse themselves for a last dance; George shakes his reserve and takes that midnight swim. More connections like these would have built some emotional momentum and infused the film’s ending with more impact.
Revealingly, Ford sees film as “a world that’s hermetically sealed in a bubble forever” and, while this is technically true (if one ignores re-released director’s cuts), not every movie feels hermetically sealed. It’s a definition more apt for a mausoleum than a movie. In the case of A Single Man, this containment (which permits style to reign at the expense of story) makes for a visually impeccable but emotionally dull (as opposed to dulled) experience. If Ford wants to connect with his audience, he needs to crack a window or two in that glass house, let some disorder and dirt in, give those of us outside the fashion industry something to relate to.
