A Single Man Movie Review

There’s something about just making it through the day that is a force of fear to be reckoned with when the mind is turned toward it. In A Single Man, Colin Firth‘s character George mentions just getting through the day, as one might when going through a difficult time, but he’s putting a gun in his satchel on the way to his job as a college professor, and he means something a little different.

George lost his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode), not long ago in a car accident, and he’s having trouble dealing with the idea. What makes this film an interesting account of such an idea is that it is rather unlike George, and there is some sense in which he is wondering at his grief as much as he is simply experiencing it. That might be misleading, because George is as deep and sentimental a guy as you could want to find, and being torn up by the loss of your partner is nothing like truly out of character for him… but, something slightly off is going on.

That something off is delivered to perfection by Firth, who, whatever may happen, will not receive too much praise for this role.

Through flashbacks, we see many moments in George and Jim’s relationship, from when they met to those oddly special times deep into a partnership, like sitting next to each other reading. We also get a shot or two of George’s reaction to Jim’s death, including the moment he’s notified. All the while, we follow George through his curious present. He tries to get points of literature through to his students, who ask questions from sadly narrow perspectives, which he can’t necessarily answer the way he would wish. He is semi-pestered by his dear friend Charley (Julianne Moore). They slept together once upon a time, and after Charley’s failed marriage, she has never quite gotten over George’s stubborn sexuality.

George also finds his meandering interrupted by one of his students. A fairly bright, attractive kid who keeps popping up when George is just trying to get through his day, and is rather clumsily coming on to him… which is not what he’s really looking for just now.

Here is a low-key film about the generally low-key wandering of a man who is likely to be frequently described by friends and colleagues as decidedly low-key. There is something tremendously unromantic about a guy who has thoughts of suicide and lays out his personal effects and everything the survivors will need to make his departure as tidy as possible. Like some demi-God of accounting misfits, George polishes his shoes just so every morning, ticks things off his 400-item mental to-do list, and if he had tools in his garage would not only have the hook for everything, but the little tool-shaped outlines.

Through all that we see of George, he never once really acts, speaks, or thinks as though he is trying to figure anything out. Perhaps like many who can only manage to feel crushed by loss, he is not. Not in a way that is conscious. The thoughts he has are only about how to make it through each day now that Jim is gone. Specifically wondering something like, “Who am I?” is not what he puts forward in his mind. George is a guy who knows who he is, and he is not the sort of person who would have thought that, “Jim’s partner,” was in any way a total summation. So why, in the low-key, ledger-book fashion of George’s normal mental outlook, is everything gone now?

This may sound simply like the tale of everyone who loses their love tragically, but don’t fall for that simplistic spin on things. We are left only to travel along with George, and put together his thoughts on our own, without everything handed to us by dialog and voiceover, but George is not wandering down such an easy road. Everyone wonders how they can make it through the day now that their loved one is gone. George talks like that too, but that’s just depression. He’s really wondering how he got through the days when Jim wasn’t gone.

The end, after all that, may seem like a bit of a gag. A misplaced joke thrown in for lack of a better way to wrap things up. I can see it feeling like that. It’s a cruel and unfortunate truth that truly brilliant things sometimes come across as almost silly. The thing is, those who really love us know something almost none of us get around to knowing… who we are, and once we know who we are… that’s really all there is to know.

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