LIM College

How would you spend the last day of your existence?

Some would try to foolishly accomplish things on their “bucket list.” Others would live daringly like they always said they would. Very few would be able to live as though that day were an ordinary day.

In Tom Ford’s breathtaking directorial debut, A Single Man, George (played by the quietly brilliant Colin Firth) wakes from a graphic nightmare recounting the sudden, tragic death of his lover, Jim. As he goes through his morning routine, it becomes apparent that we are witnessing the day on which George has decided to kill himself.

George scrupulously sticks to his routine. He goes to work at the college where he teaches, runs daily errands, and visits his best friend, Charly. (Julianne Moore plays Charly, a drunken drama queen, with such ease).  George does all this in a perfectly pressed suit and skinny black tie. 

Although George engages in his usual activities, there is something different about this day. Our protagonist realizes that because he has nothing to live for, there is nothing getting in the way of living with a heightened capacity for realization.

Through this confrontation with the fact that his loveless life no longer holds meaning, he is able to see the simple beauty that he had been blinded from previously. All of this beauty is accounted for gorgeously through Tom Ford’s direction (he really shows us the story rather than tells it) and Eduard Grau’s cinematography. While George’s entire world is portrayed gloomily with a lack of color, simple moments and things become beautiful to him. That can be seen through the spectacle of contrast, saturation and depth that bring life back into George’s melancholy existence. 

George gives his inherently meaningless life significance through succumbing to the realization of beauty in simplicity. While it may take tragedy to evoke such emotions, I can only hope that more people learn to live as though every day is their last.