This film is a very valiant attempt to take a novel and make it work on screen. They do a lot in terms of color and sounds to fully bring about a very novel feeling.
George is a professor at a college in Los Angeles, a few months earlier his long time lover of 16 years died in a car accident. As the time the film takes place in is the early sixties homosexuality was frowned upon. George wasn't invited to the funeral (family only) He goes about his day in the film, and as we watch we start to realize he plans on this being his last. he's getting all his ducks in a row and he plans on killing himself.
Much of what we experience on screen is simply trying to turn what we would have read in the novel into something tangible: The smell of a dog, the sounds of an empty house. These things are easy to imagine while you read, but to watch them is very different. In that sense they were truly successful, they worked hard on picking just the right color, the right angle and timing of everything in the film. In that way it is a novel, along the lines of "The Hours" it goes slow, chooses its words carefully.
George is a man who loves life, and its accentuated by explosions of color on screen when we see something he lusts for or is interested in. All else seems to literally pale in comparison. But even for all that he loves life he is in pain every day without his partner. The music fits perfectly with every scene, in fact it felt like most of the narrative is pushed along by the music, it seems that the music is the driving force behind everything that happens. The cinematography in that same sense is perfectly planned and works its way though the story and pushes it along. They described this as a stream on consciousness narrative, and I don't exactly disagree with that, but its a lot more than that. It is truly how a mind works, it's the little things in George's life that sets him off on a look at the past.
Little things like him telling his close friend Charley (a woman) that he is going to forget the past, totally and forever, is interpreted by her as one thing when he is in fact talking about his own death that he plans on very soon. I imagine this story being a loaf of bread soaked in scotch and sadness, there is a reality to this film that hits me in a very real place.
Colin Firth is always a pleasure to watch, and it's no wonder that he was up for an Oscar for this role. Julianne Moore was also very good, although not in it nearly enough to fully appreciate her. Tom Ford, the director, seems to be a force to be trifled with, this is his FIRST movie, ever, very impressive.
I very much liked this movie, I loved it. The trailer gave me an impression of what this film was about, and it was sort of a lie, but then again the trailer was just images and music, no actual words, which by the way is a great way to make a trailer. Even though this film isn't quite as out there as some other "gay or lesbian" interest movies I think it fits the way life is more than those others do, for gay or straight people. 8/10 stars.
Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, Matthew Goode
Director: Tom Ford
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