Movie Review – A Single Man

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Spoiler alerts – 2009 Colin Firth stars in this adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood novel covering 24 hours in the life of a university professor with a bad heart condition, driven to depression over the car-crash death of his lover, played in flashbacks by Matthew Goode. It is all set in 1962 in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A very earnest film, beautifully filmed with a melancholic soundtrack, and impeccably acted but it is possibly the most tedious slow moving movie ever. Firth’s Professor wanders round in a daze, he is rude to the neighbours, offers comfort to a neighbour (Juliana Moore) when she laments that his homosexuality robs him of her love, and he has a brief dangerous affair with a male student who stalks him, but reminds him of his dead lover. Firth’s suicidal character is just beginning to see something positive in life when his heart cruelly brings matters to a conclusion for him. This can all work well in a book, but a film devoid of action is not for me. Arthur Chappell