A Single Man''s Faith

The new Harry Potter was great, and Im not a Potter fanatic. Looking forward to seeing The King's Speech. And Tron got a good review from a reliable source. Here's what I thought about the best movie I saw last year, in a review I wrote in a venue that was read by exactly nobody.

“A Single Man,” might be regarded as any number of things—art flick, period piece, a love story set in an era when gay people were either persecuted or invisible. But it is not a stretch to suggest that the film is also a story about faith—although not perhaps as it is typically portrayed in religious circles.  

Set in Los Angeles against the backdrop of the Cuban Missle Crisis, “A Single Man” portrays a day in the life of  52-year-old English professor George Falconer (played by Colin Firth, nominated for Best Actor in the Academy Awards) in the aftermath of the sudden death of his partner of 16 years.

It is a day that George is planning to end with a suicide. Darkness—the imminence and finality of death, the threat of nuclear showdown, the frustration of dreams, and the unalterable alone-ness of the human condition—are everywhere. Moreover, all the traditional moorings are disintegrating. George,    a British ex-patriot who came to the States in the fifties because it was the place to be, laments what he calls the “total breakdown of culture and manners.” Traditional religious faith and the name of God are not, in this story, anywhere to be found.

And yet George is redeemed by the intervention of an infatuated student, Kenny, himself groping in the darkness, but possessed of a guileless kindness and a simple faith in doing the next right thing—  

with George passed out after a day of heavy drinking, Kenny hides the suicide gun with him as he slumbers, angelically, in a neighboring room.

Death is not to be avoided—in this life or in this movie—but George rediscovers his faith. “The times I have felt most alive are those times I have made a connection,” he says—with a friend, a lover, with the natural world.

The pious often portray faith as a matter of believing things that are unbelievable, of leaving oneself intellectually defenseless for the sake of a dogma. Is it any wonder that atheists—from Christopher Hitchens to Richard Dawkins to Sam Harris—are writing bestsellers?

Might not faith be better understood as fidelity, an intentional “staying with”--staying with the difficult marriage, the hopeless or perilous situation, the friend or stranger in need? Think of Christ in Gethsemane lamenting that none of his friends would stay away with him—or of Kenny who did stay.

And it might also be understood as a fidelity, an openness, to those moments of connection when life, seemingly flat and one dimensional, reveals itself in depth and nuance and wonder—an  “assurance of things hoped for,” as Paul says, “of things yet unseen.” 

It's a dark film, but not a sad one.  

“In our culture, we all live in the future,” Tom Ford, director of “A Single Man” said in an interview. As soon as we get that new house, that new job, that new girlfriend or boyfriend or those new shoes, everything is going to be fine. But it isn't. Because it's a kind of thing that can never be fulfilled. It's very hard to do, but I try to remind myself every day to be really present and enjoy life.”