When Photographers Direct…Some Thoughts on “A Single Man”

I saw Tom Ford’s film last night, slightly behind the pack.  There was a deliberateness to his every scene, I could literally feel or hear him directing.   In contrast to all the Dogma school films I’ve seen coming out of Europe, where the director is, I believe irresponsibly absent, and set against all the huge CG- driven American films where the director is hiding behind a massive tech budget, I found Tom Ford’s almost heavy-handed craftsmanship refreshing.  I could relax into each perfectly composed, calmly calculated shot, knowing that he had thought this through, and trusting that his impeccable taste wouldn’t disappoint.

He is, to me, a photographer directing a movie.  Take the scene where shiny black shoes just enter the corner of a frame: this is attention to composition that comes from an understanding of a static frame and the tension that arises when something breaks it.  Very Cartier Bresson.  Or the beach scene where the footage of Colin Firth and his lover is converted to B+W, the high, overhead sun casting Edward Weston style shadows.  There’s a rigorous control, attention to detail, drive for perfection that photographers, especially fashion photographers command.  And this makes sense given Ford’s fashion background.  I’d argue that generally, this commitment to perfection is a liability in filmmaking since, in film, the eye never lingers long enough for perfection to register.  But the ability to really conceptualize and shape a shot – this does translate between the forms.  I think the last time the photographic sensibility of a film struck me so intensely was the first time I watched Antonioni’s Blow Up.  Let’s say the scene in Single Man with the huge Psycho poster in the background (brilliant staging, btw) is very Weege, and extreme close ups throughout the film of eyes…who else but Man Ray?

In another film, set in another time, about a man other than English Lit. Professor George Falconer, Tom Ford’s stylized and controlled approach would not have worked.  But here, the tight composition suitably underscores the 1960’s Los Angeles in which A Single Man is set -  a perfectly composed frame, a perfectly composed era.  But, just as the occasional object: a shoe, a cigarette may pierce the scene from the left or the right, so too the film seems to promise, will the coming cultural tides. (If tides could pierce).

Still, Ford’s composed, unswerving vision serves, I believe, a deeper purpose, without which the film would feel like an expensive ad for his suits.  The subtle message of the film, the hero’s own subtle but essential odyssey would escape us were it not held within the stricture of the scenes, the suits, the glass house in which Professor Falconer lives.  Ford’s well-framed scenes become a belljar through which we can see the fluttering heart of the film.

Photo: Edward Weston

- Tanit

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