Culture

Directed by Tom Ford
(4.5/5)


Tom Ford’s directorial debut A Single Man is, above all else, an aesthetic splendour. Based on the Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name, the story follows a day in the life of George Falconer (Colin Firth), a gay English professor, coping – or rather, not coping – with the death of Jim, his partner of 16 years.
Set in 1962, in a Los Angeles before the Stonewall riots and the gay rights movement, George is barred from attending Jim’s funeral, and barred from acknowledging their relationship – even in his death. Mourning his love in silence, George struggles to find happiness in his life again, crumbling beneath a facade of dapper composure and English restraint. 
Firth’s performance is spectacular – nuanced and subtle, he brings warmth and colour into this otherwise heavily visually-centric film. 
From the very first scene, it becomes clear that this film is the work of a designer. Every shot is saturated with sartorial and architectural nostalgia, every frame filled with members of a stunningly good-looking, immaculately-dressed cast – almost to the point of absurdity. The perfectionism and the eye for texture, light, and symmetry Ford displays in every shot of A Single Man, as George surveys the world left around him, lends the film a decidedly contemplative tone; contemplative in a way that compliments the narrative, but also contemplative in the manner of a cologne commercial. 
But it works. Firth’s character burns through the two-page-spread, making for a moving story about loss and how we reconfigure ourselves in response to it.