These are my notes for the film we will be screening tonight:
A Single Man
USA 2009 (99 minutes)
Director: Tom Ford
Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult
Awards and Nominations
• Won BAFTA for Best Leading Actor (Colin Firth)
• Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Colin Firth)
• A further 12 wins and 23 nominations
“...an indulgent exercise in 1960s period style, glazed with 21st-century good taste, a 100-minute commercial for men’s cologne: Bereavement by Dior.”
Peter Bradshaw
George Falconer (Colin Firth), an ex-pat English professor at a Los Angeles college in 1962 is struggling to cope after the death of his long term partner Jim (Matthew Goode) in a car accident. He plans to commit suicide and the film follows him over the course of his final day as he meets various people including Charley (Julianne Moore), a semi-alcoholic divorcee, and Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), a bisexual student, but these encounters force him to reconsider his decision.
The film is based on a semi-autobiographical 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood that is set at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, i.e. before the sexual revolution of the late 1960s, when Isherwood was concerned about losing his young partner who wanted to move from Los Angeles to the more relaxed atmosphere of San Francisco. Isherwood’s decision to set the action over the course of one day was inspired by his admiration for Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, which took its structure from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Another critic noted the novel’s resemblance to Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, even going so far as to suggest that its title could be Death in Venice, Cal.
Colin Firth received unanimous praise as well many awards for his performance in the film. In The Guardian Peter Bradshaw noted that the role of Falconer
“is such a perfect match for Firth’s habitual and superbly calibrated performance register: withdrawn, pained, but sensual, with sparks of wit and fun.”
He made his film debut with a lead role in Another Country (1984), but it was his role as Mr Darcy in the TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1996) that brought him to international attention. Since this success he has appeared in a wide variety of films on a regular basis, ranging from art house to purely commercial, but it is A Single Man that has brought him his greatest critical acclaim to date. He has recently received rave reviews as well as predictions of future awards for his performance as George VI in The King’s Speech (2010) which will receive its first UK screening at the 2010 London Film Festival.
Tom Ford made his name as creative director for Gucci and YSL before setting up his own brand – Tom Ford – in 2005. In his new role he had dressed many of Hollywood’s leading men, and in parallel with his own label also established his own film production company. A Single Man is the first film that his company has produced as well as his first film as director.
But how does it all relate to Cabaret? Is this the same Christopher Isherwood?
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is... Isherwood visited Weimar Germany and when war broke out in 1939 he went to the USA with W H Auden. Auden eventually returned to the UK but Isherwood moved to California to teach at universtiy and eventually became a US citizen.
ReplyDeleteMany of his novels contains an element of autobiography and Cabaret comes from an early novel called Goodbye to Berlin (via a stage adaptation called I Am A Camera) based on his time in Germany.
The BBC will shortly be screening a film called Christopher And His Kind based on Isherwood's later - and franker -autobiographical account of his early life.