BEFORE: This year's not over yet, there's still a long way to go. 72 more films after tonight before I can even start about thinking about next year, if there is a next year, if the world is still around and if movies are still a thing. Who the heck knows any more? But there are 140 days left to watch those 72 movies, and that's too close to one every two days. I can't live like that, rationing out my movies - I'd rather sprint toward the finish line, and then have almost two months of activity in November and December. But now I have a plan, so it's x number of movies in August, and another x number of movies in September, because I know where I need to be on October 1, and how many steps it's going to take to get there.
Knowing the steps for the rest of the year, and the links that I believe will get me there, necessitated moving a couple romance- or relationship-based films out of the February plan. This is one of them, there'll be another in three days' time. I'm crossing my fingers hoping that these moves don't make next February's chain impossible - at some point in my late-2020 break I'll have to reassess the 2021 romance chain, to see if the holes can be repaired, and if so, how best to patch them. Eh, the romance list was too long anyway, if I have to shorten it next year based on the linking, that's not the worst thing in the world. But if I have two perfect years in a row, it's going to be tough to come off of that train and start watching movies at random again. If I don't I'll never get to the miscellaneous documentaries and time-travel films that don't link up with anything else. C'est la vie.
Colin Firth carries over from "Greed".
THE PLOT: An English professor, one year after the sudden death of his boyfriend, is unable to cope with his typical days in 1960's Los Angeles.
AFTER: OK, time to make some more connections, beyond the fact that Colin Firth appeared in "Greed", in a cameo as one of the recorded birthday greetings for Sir Richard McCreadie - though IMDB hasn't made the full update yet, based on my suggestions. Actually, I just checked, and they declined it - God forbid they take the time to WATCH the movie to investigate the things I report. Geez, don't they know me by now? They took a couple hundred of my other submissions last week, but they're holding fast on Colin Firth and Ben Stiller being in "Greed"? What the hell?
Right, I'm getting off track - "Greed" was a film about a fashion designer/mogul, and "A Single Man" was directed by a fashion designer, Tom Ford. He used to be the creative director at Gucci and Yves St. Laurent, before also directing some films, including "Nocturnal Animals". "A Single Man" was his first feature, based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood. It's about a gay English lit professor in the early 1960's, named George Falconer - apparently the character had no last name in the novel, but Tom Ford gave him one, the same last name as Ian Falconer, someone (his first lover?) he met while attending college in NYC. There may be some crossover here between the movie's plot and the director's life, I'm therefore guessing - it's OK, there's been quite a bit of that happening this year, like with "The Tree of Life" and "Little Women".
I'm out of my comfort zone, like I was with "Call Me By Your Name", but that's OK, too - I don't have to be gay to watch a movie about a gay man, I'm secure enough in my orientation that I can watch this just to gain some understanding about experiences that are outside my own. And of course I fully understand that the 1960's were a very different time, some people mistakenly thought that homosexual men couldn't possibly form a partnership bond that was equivalent to the more common ones between men and women, and now we know that's a bunch of hooey. Anyway, there are plenty of straight relationships that go belly-up for any number of reasons, so even comparing the two, or suggesting that one is better than the other, or more sacred somehow, is also a load of rubbish.
We meet George Falconer about a year after his partner, Jim, died in a car crash, and even though George wasn't there with him when it happened, he still has vivid dreams about the incident, or what he imagined the incident to look like. The couple's two dogs also either died or were lost in the crash, so essentially, George has lost his whole family, but each day he wakes up from the car-crash dream, gets dressed, puts on a brave face and teaches his classes, and nobody is aware of the pain that he's gone through, and is still going through. Well, there's his female friend Charlotte, who he apparently had a relationship with years ago, and that friendship helps pull him through, too.
We follow George through the day, however the day is also full of flashbacks and time-jumping, which we see as George remembers key moments from the relationship with Jim, or the dreaded phone call he received from Jim's cousin that told him about the crash, and that the funeral would be "family only", therefore he shouldn't attend. It's a bracing reminder in this modern age that things weren't always the way they are now, that gay relationships were, for a long time, wrongly considered less valid or less real.
Unfortunately, Charlotte can't seem to understand this point, either, because she mistakenly assumes that now that Jim is out of the picture, George will eventually find his way back to her, then she won't be so alone either, now that her husband has left her and her son is off to college. Charlotte sees the person she wants George to be, not the person that he is, but of course she's got a vested interest in regarding him this way - but he's always going to keep her at arm's length as long as there are young Spanish men at the liquor store who look a bit like James Dean, and also shirtless men with well-defined abs playing tennis on the college campus.
Eventually we realize that George is putting his affairs in order, getting certain items from his safe deposit box, leaving notes about what suit and tie he wants to be buried in, and also making sure that he's got bullets for his gun. You know, the everyday errands. But he can't quite seem to go through with the suicide, so one may wonder how many times he's gone through this little ritual. Postponing your suicide because you can't quite find a comfortable position on the bed is a little bit like when they disinfect the arm of a murderer sentenced to die - in a few minutes, it's just not going to matter. But George keeps finding one reason after another to (literally) not pull that trigger. Perhaps the attempt is some weird form of therapy, that puts him in touch with how close death always is, even if we're not aware of it.
Instead, it seems like there's a burgeoning relationship between George and one of his male students, which I'm pretty sure is against any college's rules, for both straight and gay teachers. But perhaps it does happen, or did back in the 1960's, I mean, if they can't love each other openly in society, then they're going to keep it a secret anyway, right? No spoilers here about the ending, I promise, but really, it sort of hearkens back to that line from "The Shawshank Redemption" - "Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'."
Also starring Julianne Moore (last seen in "Seventh Son"), Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "Tolkien"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "The Lookout"), Jon Kortajarena, Paulette Lamori, Ryan Simpkins (last seen in "The House"), Ginnifer Goodwin (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Teddy Sears, Paul Butler, Aaron Sanders, Lee Pace (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Erin Daniels (last seen in "The Sitter"), Aline Weber, Keri Lynn Pratt, Adam Shapiro (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Marlene Martinez, Nicole Steinwedell and the voices of Jon Hamm (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Muscle Shoals") with archive footage of Janet Leigh (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead")
RATING: 5 out of 10 moments of clarity
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