Tom Ford’s approach in screenwriting and directing his first
feature film, A Single Man (2009),
which is based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel of the same title, can be
characterized as thoroughness oriented to the use of film as art not merely for
visual storytelling, but also to probe the depths of human meaning and present
the audience with a thesis and thus something to ponder. As Ford reveals in his
oral commentary to the film, that thesis is that we should live in the present,
attending to it more closely, because today might be our last day of life.
George, the film’s protagonist, supposes that in intending to commit suicide at
the end of the day—the film being confined temporally to it—he chooses the
final day. Yet though an exquisite use of prefigurements—foreshadowings that
subtly anticipate. Just as a film with a depth of meaning operates at different
levels in the human psyche, the prefigurements in such a film should also be
hung at different levels with care—and varying distance’s from the tree’s
center. For such meaning is nuanced, or multivalent, rather than entirely
opaque and transparent. In this essay, I take a look at Ford’s use of
prefigurements to anticipate George’s death as an event that is finally
unanticipated, at least from the standpoint of George’s plan to kill himself at
the day’s end.
The full essay is at “A
Single Man.”
