I myself don't know what to think about A Single Man. Obviously the fact that it's visually exquisite can't be refuted; every shot (and it is literally every shot) is gorgeous, whether it's the lighting, the camera angle or movement, whatever it is the crew have taken great pains to create one great, big, living, feeling photograph. It's that beautiful. And, of course, we have some fantastic actors carrying this simple, deliberately poetic, minimalist dialogue. There's a lot of sensitivity, sensuality and beauty in A Single Man, and for some people, this will make it the ideal film experience.
But...for some others it's a little too much. There are times when this film makes me giggle, just at the sheer overblown absurdity of it's beauty. The fact that mainly every supporting character looks like they just strutted off a catwalk (e.g I noticed Carlos, the hustler character, is in fact well-known super model out of the film), I found particularly annoying. Lois, Kenny's blonde friend, really irked me with her constant staring and pouting. She looked like such a little brat, whose greatest talent is to sit very still and smoke cigarette after endless cigarette...I digress, fashion people annoy me.
And that's why A Single Man can annoy me. Because it sort of reeks of fashion. The pink cigarette's, the slow-motion extreme close ups of peoples eyes and lips, the super-model extras, Julianne Moore's ridiculous, self-pitying, whining excuse of a character...
I'm sure if I thought long and hard about it I could explain why all this is essential to the substance of the story itself. But right now I just can't!
"A film is-or should be-more like music than like fiction..." Stanley Kubrick
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davidtaylor-18-447027
12 years ago
I loved it purely from the cinematography & it's a million times better than that complete waste of time "The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" I'm falling asleep just thinking about it
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