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. .
I completely agree with you. While I was watching the film, this moment stood out to me because of how George seems to flow through the crowd of professors and students without seeming to be noticed by any of them, or realizing he is disrupting the movement of people walking past him. This scene may seem straightforward and not important to the plot, but when taking another look, it pulls together many significant meanings from the film.
ReplyDeleteWhen thinking back to this scene, I remember how the people around him are all moving forward at a constant pace, and also are moving forward in their lives, unlike George who is stuck in the opposite direction, his past. George is leaving behind this world since he is planning to take his own life. The images and reminders that Jim, the love of his life, has died and is no longer with him, have been his main focus for months, and because of this, George has slowly let go of his future and decided that his life is not worth living anymore. The other people from the crowd and throughout the film do not see this in George since they can not think in the way George is, since matters from their past remain there.
This scene also makes me think about the lecture George gave to his students, directly after this scene was shown. He discusses how there is an invisible minority among his students and the rest of the world that people are too afraid to talk about. This invisible minority he is referring to is being homosexual. For me, there is a connection in this and when George walks through the crowd. Even though he moves straight down the middle of the pathway, forcing everyone to go around him in order to get by, no one truly takes notice of him. George’s invisibility is distinctive in this scene and shows that George is invisible in many different aspects in his life. The only person that relates to George’s lecture and sees that George is stuck in the past is George’s student, Kenny, who also is a part of the invisible minority.
-Summer Ceraolo-O'Donnell