In Peter Bradshaw’s review of A Single Man, there is a certain sense that there is more to this review than with most that you come across. Bradshaw does focus on content, there’s no doubting that, but he also does make a point to give an artistic depiction of the film and briefly discuss some elements of form. The major artistic description that this review gives us of the movie is that it looks perfect, but almost too perfect sometimes, which I would have to agree with. As the reviewer points out, everyone in this movie is attractive, which is hilarious considering that everyone always mentions to George how awful he looks. This perfection also leads to many of the scenes looking a lot like advertisements in their gilded perfection. All the colors are just right and accentuated perfectly, all the people are just right for every scene and even sometimes the dialogue can come off as something just a touch more perfect than reality. While this review does take glimpses at Susan Sontag’s new vision of criticism, it ends up mostly discussing the acting and more plot structured elements of the movie. This may be because the review was written in the Guardian and that Hollywood does not have as much of a chokehold on what people care about in a movie. For this review to improve on Sontag’s vision I believe it would need to focus more on the form and take its ideas of the perfect image a little farther to how that effects our perception of the film.
The most dramatic element of this movie, that also does a good job of contributing to the narrative of the film, is the saturation of color around George. This is, for the most part, pointed out to us using extreme close-ups (when the girls lipsticks saturates in the beginning of the film), or when the entire scene saturates (when George smells the fox terrier) it is given in a medium close-ups. This saturation for me had two meanings. It would happen as George would in some sense link to his past, but for the most part I believe it happened as George came to appreciate his present. The movie began with him appreciating the little things: the lipstick, an eye, the kids playing across the street with their mother, lips. But then as the movie progressed entire scene would fill up with saturation as when he smells the dog’s hair, had the cigarette with the Spanish kid, or his trip to Charlotte’s. Then after he met Kenny in the bar the movie was entirely saturated. I believe this, in a highly artistic way, brought home the point that George did not begin as one who appreciated the present at all, but that a chance meeting and a new friend could change your whole outlook.
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