The Bloggomist: The Local Boy
Film Opinion

I’ve been sitting tentatively pawing this keyboard for the last two hours.  To be honest it’s been hard to sit still this weekend much less hunker down and try to write about anything remotely “cool” or interesting.  If you’ll allow me slightly more creative license this week, I might get a little personal before my review of Tom Ford’s “A Single Man.”  Friday night was an exhausting but incredible private dinner we hosted at OCLA with M.I.A. for Alexander Wang’s new collection of sunglasses for Linda Farrow and I didn’t hear my alarm the next morning.  I awoke to the ridiculous sonar pulse of my Blackberry receiving a text but when I opened it up I could have sworn I was still dreaming.  Apparently my friend was dead, killed in a car accident while I slept.

I leaned back on my pillow and stared at the ceiling.  I held the phone over my face again, squinting.  The words didn’t make sense to me.  I crawled out from under my sheets and stumbled into the shower.  Fifteen minutes of steaming water and still no clarity.  Fully clothed sitting at the living room table I reopened the text and laid my phone on the cool black wood.  The words remained static, unchanged.  I picked up the phone and called his cousin.  We exchanged some words and then hung up quietly.  He was gone.

I was left with a sense of emptiness.  In truth, we’d grown apart ever since I graduated from college.  Before then he was like a little brother to my best friend and me, playing basketball, going on trips, spending the night at our house, cramming for SAT’s, and running around at church like a bunch of juvenile delinquents.  There was one year we pulled a birthday prank on him and jumped him on the street, blindfolding him and putting him in a cow suit to visit Burger King to buy a Whopper, terrorize a random playground, and run the streets like the bulls in Pamplona.  Best birthday.  Ever.

You spend some days closer with certain people and others farther.  Life takes people different places.  I understand that.  But the last time I saw him he wanted to grab some coffee and catch up the next time he was in LA.  I told him I’d love to.  Months later I never got around to picking up the phone and now it’s too late.  While everyone else grieves I sit in silence.  Sometimes I don’t feel like I have a right to be sad.  I wasn’t “there till the end.”  That’s not a self-judgement–it’s just a reality.

“A Single Man” begins with a car crash and the story of a man who was violently robbed of someone he was very close to.  Tom Ford based his directorial debut on Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel about a gay professor who struggles with life after the death of his lover.  Let me begin by saying that “A Single Man” is perhaps the most visually beautiful film I’ve seen in recent memory.  Ford treats each frame with the kind of analytical eye he applied to a dying Gucci brand which he brought new life and success.  Indeed, some scenes have the feel of flipping through an issue of GQ rather than a film set.  Every shot seems calculated, all the filters carefully measured.  The visual effects are subtle, but stunning and effective, delicately garnishing breathtaking cuts with flushes of brilliant color and macro-shots that would make Kyle Cooper proud.

“A Single Man” does what “The Fall” failed to do.  Ford creates a visual masterpiece that really acts as visual outlets of expression for a story that is cohesive, well-paced, and emotional.  The film has an air of stuffy sophistication with the perfectly cut suits and unabashedly artistic form of cinematography but the story and performance of Colin Firth makes “A Single Man” intensely emotional and intimate.  For a film with such distinct visual polish, this is a very peculiar quality.  The movie moves back and forth between flashbacks and the present in a very natural fashion.  The seamless interplay gives a traditional third person account the feel of a first person experience.

Colin Firth’s performance is nothing short of brilliant, and not enough can be said about Julianne Moore for what limited screentime she holds.  Let’s just say he’s nothing like the awkward writer you saw in “Love Actually” and displays a full repertoire that evokes a young Michael Caine (in fact, his visage and voice is strikingly familiar as such!).  The soundtrack and sound production only bolstered Firth’s effect; Abel Korzeniowki’s haunting score was the perfect backdrop for his work.  If you can’t tell, I don’t have a whole lot of bad things to say about “A Single Man.”  Personally, those I’ve talked to who have seen it and feign apathy are just thumbing their noses for the sake of going against the grain.  ”A Single Man” is beautiful and compelling, unless you’re unreasonably uncomfortable with themes of homosexual romance.

In the past couple days I’ve kept myself pretty occupied with work.  But whenever I stop my mind drifts back to my friend’s sudden passing.  Sometimes I pause and try to imagine a different circumstance, and other times I work harder because I figure that’s what he’d be doing.  It’s what he was doing.  And in those moments I think I can understand part of what Firth’s character was experiencing.  Not the searing pain of loss.  It’s the cold confusion of confronting a future that no longer exists.  Perhaps that’s the meaning of “a single man.”

***

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To see more from Caleb Lin, visit http://evilmonito.com/author/caleb/

Published on 18 January 2010 | 4 |