A SINGLE MAN (2009) deserves the Best Actor Oscar, and his name is Colin Firth

Posted by Stephen Jannise

Having reconciled myself to the fact that Nicolas Cage will not be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, despite giving the year’s best performance in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, I was beginning to think that this category would prove to be a pretty boring one for me come Oscar night. I’m not really interested in seeing Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, and I wasn’t terribly impressed with George Clooney in Up in the Air. However, now that I’ve seen A Single Man, I have a purpose for Oscar night: rooting for Colin Firth to receive the recognition he deserves for this incredible film. (I think Daniel would agree.)

The film’s success derives from its remarkable ability to make you feel genuine grief for this fictional character, thanks in large part to Firth’s subtly persuasive performance as George Falconer. I’m not sure if Firth was drawing on some tragic experience from his own past, or if he’s just that good, but from the first moment he appears on screen, you get the sense that you are observing a truly desperate man in mourning, not an actor playing a man in mourning. But Firth doesn’t rely on melodramatic histrionics to achieve this end; in fact, I can only remember him really weeping in one scene, a flashback to the night his present sadness began. Otherwise, he simply tightens his tie, sticks out his chin, and tells himself to “just get through the goddamn day,” embarking on a performance that elicits equal parts sympathy and admiration.

Believe me, you will shed a few tears for this man.

And what a goddamn day it turns out to be. As George meets with one character after another, all the while contemplating suicide, director Tom Ford pushes all the right buttons. At various points during his day, George becomes involved in events and encounters that force him to remember once again the days when his lover was still with him, or the night when he quite suddenly wasn’t. For anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one, these narrative decisions ring true; an image, a smell, an old haunt: these are all it takes to bring those memories rushing back.

In my opinion, Ford’s most clever and insightful filmmaking decision is to focus closely on the eyes of the various women that George encounters throughout the day. Often, while talking to a woman, George will look closely at their eyes and notice that the pupils are dilating, which, as we all know, is a sign of sexual attraction. So, here is a homosexual man in the early 1960s wandering listlessly through a heterosexual society, drawing the lustful attention of so many women around him.

I was reminded of the Jack Nicholson quote from 1997’s As Good as It Gets, “I’d be the luckiest man alive if that did it for me.” It’s difficult for anyone to find a true love in that sea of people out there, but how much more difficult must it have been for gay men and women in the 1960s, when so many of them were not even out in the open? George had already found one great love, and the odds against a second leave very little hope for his future.

The film often looks like perfume commericials and fashion magazine ads. Except this time you know the glamorous tranquility is a sham.

This is a fine debut from Tom Ford, and a reminder that Colin Firth’s career has been somewhat disappointing, considering that the talent he clearly demonstrates as an actor has really only been put to good use here and in a BBC miniseries a long time ago. Both men appeared recently on Charlie Rose, and in their interviews it became clear why Tom Ford chose this story for his first film. Clearly, being gay himself, Ford connected with the issues I mentioned in the previous paragraphs, but perhaps the strongest motivating factor was the depiction of George as a man who wears his finely tailored suits as armor, hiding his deep sorrow and desire to die behind a veneer of handsome professionalism. Ford admitted to having many similar conversations with himself in the mirror throughout his life. Might this have been the perfect film for Tom Ford? If so, will we ever see his work in the cinema again?