Episode 78: A Single Man And A Single but Certain Hurt

[TW/CW: The film features in this review features suicide as an aspect of the central conflict. Listener discretion is still advised.

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I know it’s a bit… or it shows a potential lack of self-awareness to follow up an episode that opened up with a confession about topic indecisiveness with an episode that has to start off with the declaration that today’s subject has been something I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time. But that would depend on how I approached it, I guess. 

While I knew that I did want to talk about this movie and while wanting more people to know about this movie was a huge part of the reason why I launched this podcast in the first place, I still haven’t used it, have I? The urge to do so waxes and wanes, as you might expect, but regardless of how earnest the desire is, I can never seem to string together the right words or to make the right connections. It never feels good enough, I mean. It’s always a bit hollow.

And maybe this sort of dilemma was inevitable. Or inescapable. Not just with this subject. But well, any subject. This podcast was meant to be a subjective dive into media, and when you get really deep into that realm, words start to lose meaning, either the shared meaning or their overall meaning and then everything starts to falls apart.

Well maybe it hasn’t fallen apart yet, but it’s getting there. Probably.

But look, a lot of the thoughts that I have surrounding this movie and a lot of its overall appeal to me are becoming glaring relevant again. The hurts and pains… You know the stuff that is at the same time incredibly important and incredibly difficult to talk about. So to add to the difficulties that come with picking topics, there’s something inevitable about selecting this particular movie for an episode this time of year. Because the holidays are never… Well, for some people, they’re all great but not all of us.

Even though I have never felt like I have the words to completely capture my thoughts or feelings or whatever you would call the blend of these two things, the timing feels at least right enough to try. Because maybe things aren’t going to get better. But maybe it will. At some point, though, I just have to stop thinking about it so analytically. While that style of thinking is important, it’s not everything. Somehow, it still misses a dimension or two, despite its best attempts, but even that is a hard thing to explain.

And there’s something weirdly fitting about that. When you think about it. Then again, you might not be so familiar with this movie. It hit a few roadblocks when it was released.

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Hi. It’s M. Welcome to Episode 78.

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Tom Ford is better known for his work in fashion, but in recent years, well, 2009 and 2016, he found the time to make two different movies. A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals. Both films were adaptations of novels and were well-received by reviewers, but in terms of the broader population, that reception has been… Well limited. 

Today, I wanted to talk about A Single Man, which I would think is the lesser known of Ford’s two films. Nocturnal Animals seemed to get a great deal of buzz for its casting or because it was Ford’s second film so this idea of a skilled fashion designer crossing over into film wasn’t so far-fetched. 

But honestly, I heard about A Single Man in the context of a discussion surrounding the way films are rated in the US while I was in graduate in school. The argument was that A Single Man received an R rating not so much for any scene, visual, or language, but because the protagonist is a gay man whose conflict centers or is initated by the death of his longtime partner,. For that, a multiplier was essentially attached to everything that happened in the movie. So what would have been PG-13, because yes some of the themes are dark, became an R rated movie, something that is a bit harder to market if you don’t check off certain boxes, which this film doesn’t. 

At the time, I didn’t know if any of that was true, but I did know that we have a weird relationship with the movie rating system in the US. For example, a movie like Frozen you would think would be G rated, as in rated for all audiences and not parental guidance suggested, but there’s a couple throwaway jokes, that really could have been cut out with no major loss, that guaranteed it would be bumped up to PG. Because apparently PG is more marketable now? But at the same time, I had never heard of this movie or even Tom Ford in the fashion context, so I had to see the film for myself.

So yeah for Netflix, I guess. Because that’s where I was able to find the film and likely where you can too. At least US Netflix, and innocent whistling on that front. Look, I don’t have an ad read to help you if you do not have access to US Netflix, but just play around on YouTube for a bit, and you’ll get one eventually.

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A Single Man is the story of a newly single man and college professor George Falconer ,played by Colin Firth, across a single day of his life. Now, despite the connotations of the phrase (quote) “newly single man,” George finds himself in a very bad situation not leaving one. He is “newly single” because his longtime partner Jim died eight months earlier in a car accident.

Now some of you will think eight months moves him out of “newly single” territory, but his pain is still incredibly raw. Actually that might not be the argument that I intend it to be. The loss of his partner has radically changed George’s reality, and this is his new normal now. But that normal includes a sense of isolation, as the pain his carries makes it difficult to connect to those he used to always rely on and hesitant to make new connections.

And just to compound all of his problems. The date of this story is one month after the Cuban missile crisis. Of the sixties. To make it more clear, this day of George’s life that we are seeing is November 30th, 1962. And if you think a gay man would struggle to justify the pain he has from losing his partner today, woo boy, it was so much worse back then.

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I should take a moment to make something apparent, in case you are inclined to watch this film and missed the trigger warning in the show notes. This film does get a bit dark. The entire premise of what George intends the end of the day to bring is a trigger warning in and of itself. So I will let that sit in the air for a few moments before I clarify what I mean exactly, just to get people’s skipping or pausing fingers ready….

George means that day to be his last. He is haunted by nightmares of his partner’s death and the seeming lack of closure he got because of circumstances. Je believes that this intense burden and his inability to reconnect with others who may somewhat begin to fill the void that his partner has left lead to a certain conclusion. As many who are not in their right mind would be inclined to think. And really, what the film does manage to show is that this is an incredibly stifled and inaccurate way of thinking. Not quite simplistic, but it is done and really can only happen in isolation. 

As George soon discovers and the audience discovers too by proxy, and yes, that’s a tiny bit of a spoiler, but sometimes they do have a purpose of sorts. 

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Grief is isolating. That sentence has been spoken countless times by yours truly as well as others, but repetition doesn’t make things less true. Or else the sky wouldn’t be so blue anymore. But this is the sort of reality that A Single Man captures so perfectly. That George has been left alone by the death of his partner and the inability of even his dearest friend to fully understand what that loss means. That though he can co-exist and dwell in the same physical space as others, a wall remains between him and everyone else. It is not the wall that can be seen easily, but it is a wall that currently defines his existence.

As previously noted, I watched that film in graduate school. By that point in my life, I had faced many deaths and let many bridges burn in the wake of such physical losses. Well, burn is a bit inaccurate. A lack of care led things to fall apart because neglecting relationships is really no different than neglecting any other organism. Beyond it just not being the most traditional organism out there. The logic was sound, but I was still… No, I wasn’t necessarily surprised, I guess that would be the wrong word. I think I was hoping to be proven wrong on. After any sort of loss, obviously I did not want to have another one or several, and I just assumed I would be spared all of that.

But it felt inevitable. It felt like I was on a train barrelling down the track, and there was no one around to pull me off. No. People were around, but that didn’t mean someone was stopping it or pulling me out.

At some point you would think I would have learned better. That I would realize, this is an illusion, and that--even if I cannot easily see how--there is a way that I can get off of the train and save myself. But practice, in this regard, doesn’t make perfect. It makes a habit set in such a way that breaking it is hard. And it does so perfectly.

Once again, I was in graduate school. I was in a position to look back on all that had come before and see where I had gone wrong. And still, even with the power that comes from hindsight, I still felt remarkably alone in what had been my grief and the grief I still carry.

And up until that moment, it was something I felt no one else had understood.

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The worst part about classifying stories along the lines of the identity of its characters is that, well, it sometimes just becomes an easy way to toss a bunch of stories out the window, regardless of their merit. But another terrible part about that is how it seems to negate the simple truth that some experiences are universal.

Grief first and foremost. It may isolate us, but it is a suffering very few can ever escape. Even if it is not discussed. Even if we do not want to discuss it. Because rationally, why would we want to bring negativity into our lives through conversation? Why do we want to sit in that miserable state of suffering when we could just not do that? Some of us have been granted the privilege to avoid it, so we can.

There’s something truly horrible and wrong with that premise. Simply put, discussion about this isn’t inviting a monster in. Because the monster has always been there. It lurks. We wired to grieve those who are no longer with us. We miss those that we love. We might be able to reason this away but only if we keep our thought process limited or simple. But there’s so much more to it than that.

As George goes about his day, he starts to see that truth. That the thoughts or nightmares that had so previously absorbed him were misleading in many regards. Because there was more out there than what he knew behind this wall of grief he was trapped behind. There were people he had yet to meet and things he had not properly experienced or knew nevermind what else was out there that he could not yet imagine. 

He had to be pulled out of this trap by these other factors around him, by that which he had not previously been inclined to see. And in this beauty, he finds himself again.

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It’s a nice reminder, I think. It breaks the sort of monotony that the bereaved can find themselves trapped in, as they too try to escape the emotional pain and suffering that loss has caused them. Distraction and being overly busy is the most efficient escape one can hope for. Thinking about things that must be done and not feeling what needs to be felt: all of that. But going numb as other consequences. It’s another type of loss and still a loss that compounds, a loss that takes more and more away from you with every passing moment.

But still, regardless of what it may look like, things can be reclaimed or given back to you. In time and with help. The ability to feel can come back, and you’ll need it to truly feel joy again.

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The scars of grief will throb with a renewed frenzy when certain memories come up. When certain days come back up. Like the holiday season, when you think about those days baking cookies with your father, and sure, you’re at the same age when everyone else is nostalgic, but they are nostalgic in a different way. They only miss an activity not the person. That sort of moment can always be relieved for them, but nothing of my time with my father can.

And that might sound like something I’m not explaining well. Because someone who never had a good family life? They would be right to scoff at my pain as I am scoffing at someone else’s nostalgia. Because the various life experiences we have don’t just shape us but also shape the way we rank or rate or value pains and hurts. Of course, we tend to magnify our own aches because the explosions that happen closest to us are always going to look the biggest. Even if we can’t explain ourselves.

Even nnow, I am likely not explaining my love for this movie as well as I would like to, and I can’t go back to redo this. In part because I do know that I can’t do it much better. Ever. I may never be able to translate everything I am feeling or experiencing with this movie into a series of words that collectively make up a script that is then recorded and put to music into a podcast. 

But this movie had managed to capture a reality about grief that I had felt but couldn’t think about. That I couldn’t explain. As we are pulled and thrown about by forces beyond our control, we are tempted to retreat. And that retreat can take on many forms, including a retreat into the mind where things can seemingly be so simple. But they never are. We should never just exist and define our lives by the accounting of the wrongs we have suffered or the hurts we carry. Not that the temptation to do is not understandable. It is understandable. But it’s still unwise. 

What strikes me about A Single Man is its ability to capture the nuances of these truths beautifully. It captures hurt and hope as forces kept apart that gradually come to rest together as they need to. It shows what I cannot explain. It shows those knee deep in grief what they need to know but cannot bear to hear. 

At the core of it, it is a remarkably human story. Likely one of the most human stories I have ever seen.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from Sounds Like an Earful. Thank you for listening. If you like the show, please consider leaving a review or checking out our other productions.

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