Skipping the summary. Y'all know what it's about :) I am in two minds about this film.The problem: it's visually so flawless that it's dull.Clean frames, clean spaces, less life and more a homecare catalogue. Even Colin Firth sometimes stands no chance, fusing into the background like a bland aging model. The washed-out 60s palette doubles down on the impression.Make no mistake, it's kind of the point. Ford's work is to be watched through the main character's lens. And life is no longer exciting for George. Most of the time, he seems to be savoring the clean elegance of his surroundings with last-minute appreciation of a leaving guest. Rarely does his pulse speed up and the colors regain intensity.And you'll know it's not just my fancy wording once you see Ford play with the hue.Still, something feels off. I get the idea, but I don't get the message. It all doesn't move me much.Tom Ford is a fashion designer, and apparently a movie designer, too. So much so that in every scene I identified the effect at which he aimed and the detail, color, composition type intended to achieve it. It was like watching a series of artistic photos. You could pause at any moment, put the screen in a frame, hang it on a wall, and voilà!But it was so premeditated it lacked the flow. And it lacked life. A clock became a blank symbol of passing time; a pretty girl in a perfect 60s make-up - a metaphor of the epoch. Everything so universal and emblematic that I couldn't bring myself to care.And even now I'm still divided. Cause that might have been Ford's intention all the time. To have you experience first-hand how life feels to a person who's lost purpose. A washed-out collection of symbols.Yes, I have that much faith in him. I might be reading too much into it, but in some ways Ford's movies are a game-changer for me.This will be 7 out of 10. But it might well be a 6 or an 8, too. I don't know. What a maddening film.

This is a quiet, somber, and loving film, plumbing the depths of grief after the loss of one's partner in life. Colin Firth is an English professor whose partner, played by Matthew Goode, has died in a car accident. He is consoled by his friend (Julianne Moore), but is having a lot of trouble snapping out of his despondency. It's a strong cast and Firth and Moore in particular turn in great performances. The beauty of the film, just as in life, is in all of its little moments. Firth's relationship with Goode is told in brief, touching flashbacks, which feel like real memories. A student's (Nicholas Hoult) attraction to him is told very subtly, in the eyes. Firth is morose, but shaken out of his routine and contemplating life and death, takes the opportunity to tell people kind things, the things he normally wouldn't have expressed. He also recognizes those singular moments in life when one sees with absolute clarity, and the way director Tom Ford tells us this is touching and profound.The fact that the people involved in this story are gay is secondary, although it is nice that the movie shows us these relationships are like any other, and the painful consequences of societal rejection. In a heartbreaking scene, Firth's character is not allowed to attend his partner of 16 years' funeral because it's for "family only", but Ford exercises the perfect amount of restraint, and doesn't dwell on this any further. While teaching his class, Firth describes irrational fear as the motivating factor behind hatred of minorities, something heightened when a minority is invisible and walking among us. He's of course alluding to homosexuality, but how appropriate this general message is in 2017, when the outcome of fear has been so clearly felt in U.S. politics.

This film is set on 30 November 1962 in Southern California. It stars Colin Firth as a depressed, homosexual, university professor who is bereaved of his partner and is contemplating suicide.Julianne Moore gives a great performance as the protagonist's best friend - which is the only good thing about the film.This film is dull and miserable for the viewers. Firth's character chooses not to kill himself - but he dies of a heart attack later the same day. This film was misleadingly promoted as including a romance between Firth and Moore's characters.

What's up with all the single paragraph reviews of this movie? Usually single paragraph reviews on IMDb denote a spam of plugs by the filmmakers and their friends who make junk accounts to inflate a film's appeal. In this case "A Single Man" needs no artificial inflation, but I'm still perplexed as to why nobody has really dug into the guts of this film.And then I realized that it might be because this is a very challenging and somewhat abstract film that defies analysis. Well, that doesn't help you, so let's roll up our sleeves and take a whack at it.Beginning with the setting and look of the movie: It is set in 1960s Los Angeles, and appropriately it has a very dated, nostalgic look with a lot of browns and sepias. But it isn't just for show; the colors (and lack thereof) are designed to strongly convey the protagonist George's state of mind. In the beginning we learn that he has suffered a tragedy, and if you've ever experienced something life-shattering like that, you know that the world becomes bland to you. Technicolor bluejays don't come flying out of nowhere like in a Disney musical, but rather everything seems unspectacular and tasteless. I thought the inter-weaving of the 60s nostalgic look (going by those faded photographs of the 60s which, coincidentally, match the fading of memory with its color shift to monochrome) was well done.So if I haven't bored you to death with my (now 3!) paragraphs of unsensational writing, read on because there's a reason. The story itself is rather unsensational, and so it requires a decent attention span. If you bore easily, then this isn't the film for you. It's a mostly quiet exploration of a man's tormented mind; however it's spiced up by a nice little attention grabber right near the beginning. George plans to kill himself.Ah now that got your attention, didn't it? Although it shouldn't dominate the story (and doesn't), it's enough to keep you on the hook, knowing that there is an impending sense of finality. Call me a sucker, but I fall for this plot device every time, and I love movies that begin with the premise of the protagonist facing death because it adds value to even the tiniest details that unfold. Not to mention the whole morbid curiosity of wanting to see if the deed is done.Back to the story. George is a gay man in the 1960s who is not only alienated from people by his tragedy, but he is further excommunicated by the homophobic attitudes of the time. Don't worry, it's not bashed over your head like some pity party; the homophobia is shown with subtlety, so it's not a cartoonish farce. George is a respected, classy gent and there are no sensational scenes of bullying or hate, but perhaps more insidious than bullying, there's a sort of polite barrier that people (his family) construct.His one friend is "Charley" played by Julianne Moore. She plays a sort of deplorable socialite whom you can't help but love. Herself guarded by a facade of makeup and a contrived New England accent, she is a prisoner in her own sort of polite barrier. There's one scene I loved where George & Charley break down their respective oppressive walls of gentility and groove out to a hip 60s tune ("Green Onions" by Booker T Jones) which was the 1960s equivalent of pelvis-thrusting house music. The spectacle doubles as an interesting seduction scene, and you'll have to watch the movie to see how that turns out."A Single Man" has a artistic feel and visually poetic quality that could only be achieved by a brash cinema newcomer who hails from a different artistic discipline altogether. We got exactly that with debutante director Tom Ford, a fashion designer who revamped Gucci in the mid 90s, saving the company from collapse. I haven't seen his Gucci creations, but I was surprised that the look of this film is surprisingly dark and conservative. No flashy runway theatrics required.Tom Ford's vision reminds me of other stylish directoral debuts from art crossovers like Chanel/Dior model-turned-director Daniella Amavia ("A Beautiful Now") and dancer-turned-director Arielle Javich ("Look, Stranger"). It also reminded me very much of the excellent film by Sally Potter (dancer-turned-director) "Ginger & Rosa" which is similarly set during the 1960s in polite society while the Cuban Missile Crisis and threat of nuclear annihilation looms over the head of Ginger, a very troubled teen. In all of these films I've mentioned, the look is very distinct, graceful and memorable. If you like films like that which, in addition to providing lush eye candy, also force you to think about subtle themes rather than action & car chases, check out "A Single Man" and all the others.