A Single Man vs Revolutionary Road

A Single Man is one of those movies that makes people talk about other eras of filmmaking, in a “don’t make ‘em like they used to” sort of way. It’s a bit of hindsight at work, obviously, since if the way they used to make them was so great, they never would have stopped making them. And, more importantly, A Single Man is an almost singular effort. It’s like Far From Heaven in that the era and styles it points toward are so specific that it comes across as an original. Like that movie, as well as The Hours and The Age of Innocence, A Single Man uses the repression of its setting as a metaphor for the mental state of the lead character.

George (Colin Firth) is a literature professor in Los Angeles in 1962. He’s well-spoken, impeccably dressed, popular with students, and suicidal. In fact, he’s going to kill himself at the end of the day. George has been distraught, in his own, invisible manner, for months, over the death of his partner, Jim. They had been together for sixteen years when Jim (Matthew Goode) was killed in a car wreck (an accident that also killed the couple’s dogs. I know that’s a spoiler, but I’m just trying to make you understand: suicide.) He’s selected the clothes he wants to be buried in, written notes to his loved ones, organized all his legal documents, and left money for his housekeeper, who will likely be the one to find the body. In one darkly funny scene, George practices killing himself, trying different ways of putting his gun in his mouth, and approximating the position in which his body might fall. Appearances will matter to George, even when he’s gone. Colin Firth is impeccable as George. Every detail rings true. George is holding one emotion and projecting another, and Firth handles each without ever being manipulative.

His best friend is a woman named Charley (Julianne Moore), one of those movie characters who only seem to exist for the act of entertaining. Charlie is having George over for dinner, and spends the entire day, as far as we can tell, getting ready. Charley puts her face together, piles her hair high, and dresses formally, all to have dinner with George. They have a fun time, full of sarcasm, gin and dancing. Man, I can barely describe the image of those two dancing in Charley’s living room. It’s something you rarely see in movies. They’re doing everything they can to mask their sorrow: clothes, jokes, drinks. And then Charley puts on Green Onions and they literally make an attempt to dance their cares away. It works, on them and us, for a bit, but then reality comes back in. Charley is in love with George, and wants desperately to be loved back, or to be regarded in any way flattering or respectful. Julianne Moore has played some tragic figures in her career, but none so economically. Charley only gets a handful of scenes, hardly any dialogue, yet we learn all we need to know about her. Charley is a lush, sure, but she’s sadly self-aware. George’s dinner with Charley is perhaps the most important scene in the movie, and one of the best sequences I’ve seen this year. On DVD, I’m going to queue it up and watch it like a short film.

George’s day, which he endures like so many others, is intercut with flashbacks, both to happier times with Jim, and the day he learned of the accident. I assume each day was like this: regret-filled and miserable, with silent memories of better times to keep him going. Most of these scenes are wordless, sometimes black and white, sometimes slow-motion. George is realistic and practical about his pending suicide, but why this day? Why is this the day to end it all? And what about that student, the one who pays such close attention, and mysteriously asked for George’s address? A Single Man, while not a thriller, plays out like a bit of a puzzle, with the present and the past used alternately to relay George’s story.  I’ve heard a few rumblings about it choosing style over substance, but George and Charley could tell you, without style, their substance would keep them in bed all day.

A Single Man was directed by Tom Ford, who was known up until now as a fashion designer (and as Scarlett Johansson and Kiera Knightley’s photo partner when they got their asses out for Vanity Fair). And true, while discussing A Single Man, you cannot avoid mentioning its style. Besides the clothes and homes (George literally lives in a glass house), the film is filmed and lit in such an exquisite way it’s almost decadent. At times, the movie looks like it’s playing on the best color TV available circa 1970, over-saturated and grainy. Other times, it practically glows, the actors moving through a gauzy fog. Charley’s house looks like a film set, while George’s seems authentic (read into that what you will). There are dreamlike underwater shots, countered by the stark white scene of the accident, with Jim stretched out on the snow beside his car. Anyone with doubts about Ford’s intentions or talents in regards to filmmaking can rest easy. I’m hoping A Single Man was more than an experiment, and that he returns to directing as soon as possible.

In fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing what he might have done with Revolutionary Road. It’s set in the same time as A Single Man, deals with a similar type of secretive suburban ennui, and features a couple that, like George and Charley, might be better off just joking and dancing through dinner, before retiring to their own suicidal homes at the end of the night.

A year has passed, and Kate Winslet won her Oscar for a different movie, so I think it’s safe to tell you that while Revolutionary Road touches on many of the themes of A Single Man, and does a lot of stuff well, I like it a little less each day.

There’s a lot to admire about Revolutionary Road. The acting is good across the board. Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates and especially Michael Shannon, give vulnerable, passionate performances. DiCaprio and Winslet are Frank and April Wheeler. When they meet, they share a lust for life, for creativity and adventure. They want to experience everything and have no regrets. Instead, they get married, have kids, and become trapped in the suburbs (Bates is their neighbor, Shannon is her mentally unstable son). They’re both frustrated and angry, and spend the bulk of the movie fighting about it. Fighting. As in, screaming and throwing things and claiming they never loved each other. As in, they’re driving and have to pull of the road so they can really throw down.

The entire movie. All they do is fight. Once they start fighting, we forget if they were ever happy. I’d be curious to find out, if I could muster the patience to watch the movie again. Maybe I’ll just watch the pre-fight scenes. That would render Revolutionary Road down to about ten minutes.

We barely see at all what it was that attracted Frank and April to each other. No glossy slow-motion flashbacks, no witty dinners. They’re the most pathetic, ill-tempered, ungrateful people in any given situation. I guess I shouldn’t have expected them to like each other much, since I didn’t like them either. Revolutionary Road definitely looks authentic, but it’s horrifying. Frank’s job is just row after row of cubicles, desks and smoke. I realize that everything set in the 1960s can’t be Mad Men, but can’t it at least give us a little light to temper the dark? Revolutionary Road has a scene with a birthday party, with Frank’s family cast in the warm glow of birthday candles as he enters his home. Of course it only serves to remind him how terrible it is to be married and chained to that dream of the white-picket fence.  While A Single Man plays as some sort of tone poem to a man struggling with the idea that the world is his to walk alone, Revolutionary Road shows us that maybe he’s better off that way, and there’s at least one neighborhood he doesn’t want to visit.

A Single Man: A

Revolutionary Road: C+