“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” -Philo
It is a perfectly normal day in 1962, and George (Colin Firth) has decided to kill himself. He wakes up, goes through the impeccable motions of his morning routine, and makes his way to the local university where he teaches. His face is emotionless, his facade inscrutable. Only a revolver in his briefcase and a series of carefully laid out suicide notes betray his intentions to make the day his last. He is a man on a mission – but as with many men on missions, life may have other plans for him.
Colin Firth was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in Tom Ford’s directorial debut “A Single Man,” and it’s his restraint – versus dramatic displays of emotion – that won him the nod. George, a ‘single man’ both because he is homosexual (in an era where gay marriage wasn’t even a topic of conversation) and because he is essentially alone against the world, is a portrait of tortured repression. His partner of 16 years has been killed in a car accident, and George has dragged himself through the proceeding eight months in numbed monotony. At one point, a colleague talks loftily about the impending dangers of communism and notes that “there will be no time for sentiment when the Russians fire a missile at us.” George replies flatly: “If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world I want to live in.” The irony is that this is indeed the world George lives in, since his lover’s death, and the rediscovery of sentiment could be his last ticket to salvation.
It’d be easy to take a film like this and put it on the treacly path of “It’s a Wonderful Life” or any number of films extolling a carpe diem mantra, but Tom Ford wisely opts for a more nuanced approach. Rather than overly theatrical acting or ponderous character monologues, Ford uses the cinematography and color washes to reflect what George is thinking, flushing from flat sepia tones to vivid technicolor hues when emotion stirs within his character. It’s a visual touch that is as arresting as it is poetic; watch how George notices the details of a little girl’s dress pleats, or a student’s eye color, or smoke exhaling from a stranger’s lips. He is a man on death’s row; like many faced with their impending mortality, he is beginning to see his life for the first time.
George encounters a flux of characters throughout his intended last day, some expected and some not, and their tiny kindnesses conspire unwittingly to pull him back from the brink. A bright and observant student offers George his friendship, and possibly something more, noting gently, “It seems like you need a friend.” A stranger outside a liquor store shares a smoke as they watch the sunset, and leaves George with the simple words: “I think what you need is someone to like you.” The world is often a cold and impartial place; these fleeting encounters are a gripping reminder of how the smallest acts of compassion can sometimes alter the course of someone’s life in ways their perpetrators never dreamed of.
Is redemption possible for George? The film hints at the answer, though not in the way you might expect. Standing outside in the cool night breeze, George delivers an end-of-film speech reminiscent of Kevin Spacey’s in “American Beauty”: “A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh, as though it had all just come into existence. I have lived my life for these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.” Conversations, friendships and random acts of kindness such as George experiences during his planned final hours do not occur every day, but as “A Single Man” so beautifully reminds us, they are the moments that make life worth living.
“A Single Man” is playing now through Thursday at the State Theatre. For ticket information and showtimes, click here.
