A Single Man: A gay hero. Does it matter?
Who are minorities? Why are they called minorities? Minorities are people. Like every one of us. Like you. Like me. What separates them from those who call them as a minority is “fear”.
“A minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes a threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one.”
And if the minority is invisible like men and women with unnatural preferences, then the fear is much greater. People are oppressed. As quoted in the Bible,
“They hated me without a cause.”
But the cause is always fear. When fear takes over, people who fear manipulate the society using the same fear as a tool. Don’t people have the right to be themselves irrespective of what the society expects them to be?
But this is not a story about fear. George, played by Colin Firth is a single man who is coping up with the loss of his boyfriend who died a year back. But this is not the story of a gay either. In fact that the hero being a gay makes it no different than any other movie. It is a universal story of isolation and grief. Gay or not, anyone can relate to the story.
At times, we all find ourselves waking up terribly and waking up has hurt us by realizing the cold reality. We want to get through the damn day. And not everyone can start acting like themselves as soon as they get out of the bed in the morning. Some people take some time to adjust themselves to what is expected out of them and how they are to behave.
For George who is an English professor, this is the way of his life since he lost that someone. He has lost that one person with whom he was able to truly connect with. The connection that had made his whole life worthwhile. He is one thing on the surface. But underneath that glam suit, there are emotions of pain and agony that one cannot comprehend.
He wakes up one morning. Terribly of-course. As the grief holds him back from moving on with this life and that he couldn’t see his future, he decides to end his life that day (this ain’t a spoiler). By doing so, he looks at the world for the last time and also for the first time. He thinks that today will be different and that he knows his future. And the movie is set on that day. Is life something to be reckoned with? Are we ever in control of our life? Will George live through the day?
Colin Firth has lived the role of his lifetime as George. Not all men look believing when they cry on screen. But when Colin breaks, we break. When he looks right at us on the screen, we feel him. He need not say a word and still we can listen to him. A devastating performance of love, mystery & pain.
A Single Man is a very emotional film that reminds us that even the things considered in general as ghastly by the majority have their own beauty and meaning.
