"Single Man" depicts the day in Los Angeles during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a middle-aged English literature professor, George Falconer, who unexpectedly lost a gay man he had been in love with for 16 years, carefully prepared to commit suicide. "Today I have decided will be different."
The film begins with a mournful orchestral music and a naked man sinking in the water, and the orchestral soundtrack also appears many times in subsequent films. It depicts characters and environments gorgeously, delicately, and unobtrusively, becoming a highly representative film in content and form. specialty. The most significant and most pervasive twists and turns in the film are George's decision to commit suicide, to his decision to live on, and finally to his sudden death. The most exciting part of this process is his change from seeking death to seeking life, that is, the influence of the people and things he saw, acted, and felt during this day on him.
Characters and plot (centered on the protagonist George):
1 Gay Jim
The entire film's timeline (one day) takes place after Jim was killed in a car accident, so Jim's appearance can only be in the form of episodes and memories.
The opening chapter is a car accident in the snow. Jim dies on the side of the road. George, in a suit and leather shoes, walks to his side and lies down, kissing his lover whose face is blurred. Then the screen suddenly switches. George wakes up from his dream and begins the real life of the day. .
When George walked to the hallway, he had the hallucination of Jim playing with the dog in front of the door, and his heart ached suddenly, which also paved the way for Charlie's fear of the heart attack he had suffered and his eventual death.
After Jim drove to see his mother, George waited for his call, picked it up and flirted with him playfully, but received the bad news of the car accident from Jim's cousin, and the dog who went with him also died. He broke down and ran to Charlie's house in the rainstorm to cry bitterly. The sound of the rain covered up the human language, which I thought was handled very well in form.
Next is Jim's official appearance, and he begins to describe the characteristics of the characters. George went to the bank to retrieve the contents of the safe, which included a black and white nude photo of Jim by the sea, so he recalled the situation at that time. Black and white sunbathing, lying and sitting, a bottle of beer, they talked about Charlie, and George said "I can't say this [referring to his young romantic relationship with Charlie] means nothing to me, but unfortunately Charlie Li takes it more seriously than I do"; Jim asked him why he was with him since he had slept with women, and the answer was "Because I love men, because I love you" (I remembered a sentence I saw a long time ago. words "I'm not gay, it's just that the person I like happens to be gay"). George heard that Jim had never had sex with a woman, put his body up and said "the first thing I noticed about you was that you were so sure about yourself", I guess maybe it was because after Jim and George first met at the bar, a beautiful woman asked Whether Jim wants to buy her a drink (just one word), Jim simply refuses "I think I'm taken".
A few days before Jim's car accident, the lovers huddled together on a small sofa, each reading a book, laughing at each other's books, and trying to get each other to change the finished record (George even admitted that he was old man), unanimously envious of the dog's shrewd and comfortable life and mean neighbors, the English romantic life. Jim said "If I die right now, it would be ok", but George said "It wouldn't be ok with me", which is a prophecy, and Jim is just as above-mentioned about his age and strangeness ok. They were talking nonchalantly at the time about taking the dog back to see Jim's mother too, ignorant of the impending death and suffering. Maybe this is the trick of the director to deceive tears.
Jim's last appearance was when George had a heart attack. When he was dying, he saw Jim in a suit and tie and dropped a kiss on his face, just in line with the scene in which George dreamed of kissing the dead Jim in the opening chapter.
2 neighbors
The neighbor's appearance is also accompanied by gorgeous orchestral music. George is sitting on the toilet reading a book on this morning of his death, when he hears the sound from the window, and the camera - George's gaze - moves out of the window. The little neighbor girl was hammering the plank with the rabbit in her arms, the boys were digging the dirt, the lawn was being probed or mowed, the couple talked maybe there was a little quarrel, it seemed like everyone thought they were living meaningfully, only George was going through it. After a period of numbness from the loss of a lover, I believe that life has no meaning. The wife went to sort out the trash can, noticed George's sight, and greeted him in a friendly manner. George was caught peeping, and the thief suddenly hid his body under the window sill with a guilty conscience.
George passed a neighbor's house as he drove to school, and the fresh and joyful orchestral accompaniment brought the family to life. The little boy who likes to shoot people with a toy gun was also responded by George with a shooting gesture. This is also the one who just mentioned George and Jim being mean together on the couch.
The neighbor reappeared when George was rummaging through the checkbook at the bank. The camera changed to George's point of view again, and the little girl in the blue dress was slowly moved upwards to shoot the little girl in the blue dress. The girl complimented his thick eyebrows, took out the scorpions they kept, and bluntly said that the family liked to throw small living creatures into jars to watch them be killed by scorpions, and confided in a childlike manner that her father had said that he wanted to kill George too. Throw in this jar (because of George's gay identity). Although the film does not focus on the struggle of forbidden love, it still touches on the social environment at the time (at least part of the middle class's disdain and resentment of homosexuals), including Charlie also believes that George's feelings for Jim may just be some kind of replacement.
3 Encountered Spanish young Carlos
White T, perm, face, tobacco and alcohol, accent, this role is quite in line with my expectations for the image of Madrid's youth. George went to the convenience store to buy wine for Charlie, and bumped into Carlos when he went out. I don't think it was an accident, Carlos (the male prostitute) took a liking to George when he entered the convenience store and bumped into him on purpose to strike up a conversation when he was out. George compensated him for cigarettes. At first, he refused the invitation of the other party to smoke a cigarette. Later, he suddenly agreed. This echoes the dialogue between him and Charlie later in the film. He has not smoked for 16 years because of Jim. Reason not to smoke. This small twist in attitude may also be a small twist in George's attitude toward love. He recognized Carlos' Spanish accent and praised his appearance in gorgeous Spanish, leading Carlos to mistake for a time that George had acquiesced to his service, but George later firmly refused. George said he was trying to get out of an old love, Carlos said love is like a bus, you wait for the next one, and George is a good guy who just needs to be loved.
It is worth mentioning that the background panel of this parking lot is a pair of gazing eyes. When George first arrived in the parking lot, it was still a cold and gloomy blue color. After meeting Carlos, the color changed to a soft and warm purple red, which also indicated George's emotional writing, from the haze of the Cuban missile crisis, the talk of fear, to being needed by Charlie and loved by Kenny in the second half of the film review, his suicide after returning home is doomed to no result, no matter how he changes his posture And the scenes all feel comfortable dying.
4 Close friend Charlie has mentioned earlier that Charlie takes the relationship more seriously than George for their young romance. Charlie is a middle-aged self-pity, self-indulgent female character who calls George before 8am and says she's trying to finish a book while wearing sexy lingerie and heavy makeup. She has many friends, but they are only superficial friends. Her self-position is a middle-aged sad person who was abandoned by her ex-husband and is not needed. But at the same time we can see from George's eyes that she is still very attractive (there's no way Julianne Moore can't be charming). She and George laughed savagely about the vulgar taste of young Americans, nostalgic about London and youth, half-old dancing young dances, lying on the ground, lighting two cigarettes, and gossiping.
The feud between the two was a change of pace. George scolds Charlie for seeing Jim as a substitute for real love, Charlie explains that maybe she's just jealous that she's never loved like Jim and George, she's been abandoned by her spouse, her kids are grown up, her friends don't need her, and she's quite self-pity emotional level. She desperately desires and enjoys getting the mutually needed sense of self-worth and solitude from George, but George still gently rejects her.
5 Student Kenny
Kenny is also a fairly distinct character, distinctly loving and chasing George as a teacher. He asked the office secretary about George's residence, chased George after class to talk about fear and drug use, worried that he needed a friend when George left school, and rode his bike around George's house at night to ask for chance encounters, and finally met George. Jim's bar pretends to meet George by accident.
Unlike Jim's certainty of himself, Kenny is a rather lost young man on certain issues. Feeling stricken with fear and no one to talk to, quelling the fear by sipping on highs; thinking the past is meaningless, wishing it was over soon, the future might just be bombed by Cuba; feeling lonely, one born, one dead, everyone Enclosed in one's own body, one can only experience the external world subjectively, and can only recognize others in their own eyes. As for Kenny's loneliness, George taught him that it was one of the few times when he was truly meaningful as a person, "have been able to really, truly connect with another human being", George felt such a completely real relationship with others on this night Connection, so I finally decided to live, but "Death is future" is a prophecy again.
Kenny invited George to go swimming in the sea. George lost his mind for a moment when he saw Kenny's body at the beach, and then there was the scene of swimming naked in the moonlit night. Kenny took this as an opportunity to go home with George, put a Band-Aid on the corner of his broken brow, and the two chatted over beer. George only said that he once lived with an architect friend (not a lover) and asked what place Louise had in Kenny's life, I think what he might really want to know is how he will be in Kenny's future In his life, he sadly found that in the night when he decided to die for his lover, he moved away from love and fell in love again. And when he woke up in the middle of the night and found that Kenny had hidden the pistol he had intended to use to commit suicide, he truly felt the bond between the world and him on this day, and felt that he still had fresh perceptions and emotions. loved ones need.
recurring objects and images
1 Flesh
There are three unreal images of bodies sinking in water in the film, namely, the nightmare of kissing a dead lover at the beginning, when students in class discuss and ridicule Huxley randomly, and at the end, George's dream at midnight. The tones in the first two places are suffocatingly cold, symbolizing that George feels that life has no meaning and hope, just like a body submerged in the water, and the last place can be seen from the picture, with his body as the boundary, half is warm. The orange hue, half black, signifies his struggling desire to be reborn, and that light is given to him by those who love him on this day.
As school colleagues and George strolled and talked about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the colleague's speech was muted, and the picture and sound were dominated by the naked students playing on the tennis court, young bronze skin, athletic lines and sweat, George Staring at such a youthful body was absent.
Before the nude swimming at the beach, George looked at Kenny's naked body after taking off his clothes, which reminded me of the scene where the writer played by Colin Firth also watched the maid take off her clothes and jump into the river to pick up manuscript paper in True Love. The nudity in the water here is a real plot line, not the illusory imagery mentioned above, and Kenny's picking up George from the water also indicates that Kenny has made George stop his suicide plan. After the two returned to George's house, there was a nude picture of Kenny taking off his clothes before showering, and George's eyes were also seen.
2 Phone Ringtones
The phone ringing is a very important object in the first half of the film. The first time it appeared, it was like a background sound, and George didn't hear it and didn't answer it; the second time it appeared George was waiting for Jim's phone call but waited for his death; the third time was when George was sitting on the toilet The fourth time, Charlie called to remind George not to forget dinner, interrupting his suicide attempt.
The ringing of the phone brings an auditory breakthrough, which brings about the rhythm change in the plot, including interludes and memories, including the psychological performance of the characters, including the advancement of the plot, which are ingenious in content and form.
3 Close-ups of the facial features of the characters
There are many close-ups of the characters' facial features (especially the eyes and corners of the mouth), which are George's first-person perspectives, including the office secretary, Louise and Kenny in class, and Carlos outside the convenience store. However, I have not yet figured out the purpose of these features (seeking interaction and guidance).
4 clocks
The last thing I want to mention is the clock, which is also very easy to understand. Every time the clock appears, it directly shows the time, indicating that the plot takes place in a day, "24 hours of cold and warm". I won't go into details here.
Asingle man, a single day.
After the analysis of the characters and techniques of the film above, I would like to write about the protagonist George and my deep understanding of the whole film.
Before his widowhood, George had a near-perfect middle-aged middle-class life: a glass house by the sea, a bar he frequented, lovers of 16 years, a close friend of the opposite sex who cared for each other, a dog, a decent job. From material to spiritual, George's life is not without abundance, just like Carlos and Kenny don't believe how people like him can have a hard time. But from the corners of the film, we can still see that his life was not without worries: the Cuban missile crisis, Jim's parents didn't even want to call to inform him of his death, neighbors resented his homosexuality, he was in It is not possible to express one's own views freely in the classroom. Not all of his grief stemmed from the sudden death of his lover.
It is rumored that the original novel was created by the writer to save gay lovers, and the movie was shot by Tom Ford to show love to gay lovers. These creators have the most first-hand experience and first-class perception and creativity. A serious blow to the malignity of the world towards the LGBTQ community.
The director's use of lens, light and shadow, color, and soundtrack is not unique. Repeatedly switching the camera from God's perspective to George's perspective does not confuse people. Almost every frame is extremely visually beautiful, and it properly shows the beauty of the human body and the subtleties of sexuality and desire.
George gave a lecture on fear and minorities in class, which I excerpted below:
Let's think of another minority. One that can gounnoticed if it needs to. There are all sorts of minorities, blondes for example or people with freckles. But a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imaginedone. And therein lies the fear. If the minority is somehow invisible, and thefear is much greater. That fear is why the minority is persecuted. So, you seethere always is a cause. The cause is fear. Minorities are just people. People like us.
I think the implication here is to talk about people's fear of homosexuals as a minority group, and to make a cry of "Minorities are just people. People like us", which is similar to the famous line of "The Merchant of Venice" used by director Xiangzi. Same thing: "Do queers have no senses, no senses, no emotions, no flesh...". This part of the film also talks about communism, conflicts of values, black culture, and hippies facing the United States at that time. In fact, it is through the mouth of this English literature professor to express the director's (or other creator's) position and solidarity with fear and minority. .
We can see that on the day when George carefully prepared to commit suicide, he prepared pistols, bullets, sorted out his relics and formal clothes for the funeral, and his last words were only to tie an Oxford knot on his tie. He politely declined many times, Kenny's invitation to chase him to the car to have a drink with him, Carlos to sleep with Carlos, Charlie's request to stay, determined to reject the world and live a "very quiet life" "Weekend. But Kenny, who chased after his house, opened his dead heart with determination and fiery passion. He felt the moments of clarity in his life, the clarity of things and the freshness of the world, including dancing with Charlie and falling in love with Kenny. He admits that he was alive in those good times, and they brought him back to reality, so he put the suicide gun back in the drawer, threw his last words into the fireplace, and decided to live with love again. A heart attack made him fall by the bedside where he was going to commit suicide, and he saw Jim coming and kissing him in the blink of an eye, just as he had dreamed that he had come to the scene of a car accident and kissed Jim this morning.
This ending repaints the healing color into a heartbreak love story, and we all look forward to the time when the gun goes off and he decides to hide it back in the drawer; we look forward to the time he starts a new love, and he dies with endless regret and loneliness . What it brings to the audience is "the palpitations of stepping on the air, like a symphony that mobilizes countless notes and countless voice lines, stirs hard, but stops abruptly at the final highest, loudest, and grandest place." "He doesn't have a second 16 years."
When I first saw this film, I was impressed by the beauty of the film (in content and form), and decided to write a film review for it. In the process of writing this article, I kept looking back at the details of the film and read other people's film reviews. I am amazed at the talent of the main creative team, and on the other hand, I also know that there is no perfect work. Some people think this is like a middle-class life commercial. I think the biggest difference between commercials and movies is emotion and thought. It is true that the film focuses on the refined middle-class people, but their struggles and predicaments are not for nothing, but their own. Trait, causality, and logic.
Colin Firth was nominated for Best Actor Oscar for "Single Man" and won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup, BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor, Tom Ford, Julian Moore, Abel Koreniowski and other creative staff also nominated or won different awards, which shows the recognition of the film by the film industry at that time.
Although I know that "The Single Man" is far from unprecedented in the history of film, there are still many deficiencies that are not understood by a layman like me. Express my personal identification with the attitude conveyed by the film and my love for the lead actors.
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