One of my very last movies of 2009 I had left to see. (I think only Julie and Julia remains).

A Single Man starring Colin Firth is a truly wonderful film. Firth deserves all the accolades he received for the role, including Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Firth shows an amazingly compelling ability of facial expression and subtlety. But I think the film itself should have garnered more attention for Best Picture, Best Director, and Cinematography – it was that good across the board. The truly amazing thing is the man behind this film, first-time director, screenwriter (adapted a book of the same name by author Christopher Isherwood) and producer of the film, Tom Ford.

Tom Ford is a world famous fashion designer, best known for turning around Gucci as their creative director for more than a decade. He is also the creator of the Tom Ford label. I am in awe of his first attempt at filmmaking, he clearly has an eye for it and I am excited to see what else he does in his new career.

There are a lot of things I liked about this film, but here are a few that stood out the most:

• The movie is a wonderful love story, and the fact that it’s two men is almost completely irrelevant, which is rare that homosexuality be treated so realistically and not over-the-top or out of the ordinary, or as victims of prejudice/ignorance.
• The main character is experiencing life from a new perspective and the film’s color brightens and saturates whenever he is engrossed with awareness of the beauty in the world and is truly living in the moment. What a wonderful and subtle technique.

• Ford has an astonishing visual sense and the film is very experimental in the cinematography and it rarely misses the mark. Even the background and inanimate meaningless objects in the film suddenly are beautiful.
• The title A Single Man clearly has more to do with the isolation we each experience in the world then any romantic status. There is one conversation in the film that clearly gets to the heart of the story:

KENNY
Yeah. I’ve always felt this way (alone). I mean we’re born alone, we die alone. And while we’re here we are absolutely, completely sealed in our own bodies. … We can only experience the outside world through our own slanted perception of it. Who knows what you’re really like. I just see what I think you’re like.
GEORGE
I’m exactly what I seem to be, if you look closely. You know the only thing that has made the whole thing worthwhile has been those few times that I was able to truly connect with another person.