A Single Man

Colin Firth missed out on an Oscar in 2010 for this film. He won instead the next year with The King’s Speech. Arguably, it should’ve been the other way around. This is by far the better film, with a powerful, poignant performance by Firth in the lead role. The film ostensibly takes place over a single day, although we are given flashbacks to previous events. Firth stars as an English academic at an American university in the early 1960s whose partner has been killed in a car crash. He is not allowed to go to the funeral, due to the family’s reservations about homosexuality. The day of the film’s duration is intended to be his last day alive – he wants to commit suicide. Yet there is nothing overly morbid or pathological in this film. His principal relationships are with Julianne Moore’s character, one of his oldest friends with whom he has a confused but tender companionship, and one of his students, played by Nicholas Hoult, who becomes intrigued by his teacher and starts following him. It is a tragic, deeply affecting movie, with a profound desolation at its core. You may find it precocious, and little is done or said, but if you have the patience and the sensibility, you will find it hard not to be moved.