A moment in A Single Man that made me think was during the scene in which George arrives at school in the morning. As he walks through the crowd, which is walking in the opposite direction as him, the crowd moves around him. At the end of this long, following shot, there are two girls who are talking to each other, who are forced to split so that George can get by. I couldn't help but wonder, was that intentional? If so, what is the purpose?
While watching the rest of the movie, I kept this moment in my thoughts. I tried to keep it in mind so that I could try and attach some kind of meaning to these two girls. What I came up with was that these two girls might represent his two closest companions: Charley (his female best friend) and Jim (his deceased life partner). This moment could symbolize the distance that is occurring/has occurred in these relationships, which are on opposite spectrums of his life. Charley is, presumably, the last girl George slept with and Jim is his lost love. During this downward spiral which George intends on concluding in suicide, he is distancing himself from these two people, whether knowingly or not.
Another train of thought I had on this matter was what the entire crowd represented, and not just the two young females. This moment in the film did not have any dialogue, so it must have been a symbolic representation of something. I believe the crowd going in the opposite direction generally represents the rest of the world in George's eyes. We can't see his eyes, but he's actively walking through the crowd, much like how his mind is working towards the idea of suicide (he has the gun with him throughout the day). He's not focused on daily concerns at this point in the movie, and has different intents from those of the students and faculty. I thought this was a great establishing moment in the film, and allowed for the viewer to draw a lot of assumptions about the main character. .
