Films/DVD Asylum

I couldn't disagree more, tin!

149.254.49.75

This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Saw Colin Firth in, "A Single Man," last night and I must say both the posted by tinear on February 13, 2010 at 08:42:59

I thought it was an excellent adaptation of an under-appreciated novel. Although the central relationship is a gay one, I read/saw it as principally an examination of bereavement.
The film deviated from the book - heavy-handedly, I thought - in having the deceased's family exclude the surviving partner from the funeral. In the book, he opts not to attend. Also, suicide is hardly referred to at all in the original. Much of the dialogue is faithfully transferred, though.
Yes, Julianne Moore's character was a bit 'over the top', but so she is in the book and I must say I saw one or two people I've known in her! A fine comic/tragic performance, I thought. We've discussed accents here before, but really hers was not at all bad. Ex-pats, especially long-term ones, are almost bound to sound strange to some.
Firth's performance, too, was very moving, I thought. Maybe it'll be better appreciated on this side of the pond.
So, too, I suspect will Nicholas Hoult's turn as Kenny Potter. Remember him as the very English schoolboy in About a Boy?
Tom Ford obviously has a designer's eye. Some of the scenes could have been paintings. I'm thinking in particular of the scene where the hero pets a stranger's dog in a car. The camera pans slowly at one point and we have an exquisite diagonal composition with one of the woman's eyes and cheeks and his profile, the two separated by the head of the dog.
I know the book has been hailed as a pioneering work of gay consciousness but I think it's quite universal, too.
Detail freaks will note the referencing of (or unconscious parallels with?) Paul Schrader's American Gigolo, most strikingly in the hero's clothes cupboard and car.
And much like Chuck Berry's 'C'est la Vie' in Pulp Fiction, Booker T and the MGs' 'Green Onions' will evoke Firth and Moore's groovy moves for many of us for years to come!
Different strokes, I suppose!

Edits: 03/05/10

Follow Ups: