Living Hope

 
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What is it that makes life worth living? And what happens if you lose the only thing that gets you through the day? George (Colin Firth) is a man in precisely this situation. In the wake of the sudden death of his partner Jim (Matthew Goode), the world seems drained of all colour. Every night he dreams of drowning, and wakes only to be confronted again by his grief. In fact, George finally decides, he no longer has anything worth getting out of bed for.

On the day that he decides to end it all, he sets his affairs in order, writes letters to his housekeeper and best friend, and buys bullets for his gun. But as he goes about his normal routine for the last time, something strange begins to happen. Ordinary moments seem to take on extraordinary significance and the people around him glow with sudden beauty. Unexpected complications cause him to continually postpone his final moments. As the world conspires around him to give him back the hope he has lost, George must decide whether it is worth choosing life over death.

The first feature from fashion designer Tom Ford, A Single Man is - as might be expected - visually stunning. Full of sumptuous close-ups and period details, with colours that bloom or seep away depending on George's moods, the photography is breathtaking. The story itself is more problematic: the only real point of dramatic tension is whether or not George will commit suicide, and as the audience can be fairly assured that the protagonist will not drop out of the story halfway through, some scenes drag. The film could justly be accused of prioritising style over substance, were it not for its leading man, who gives an Oscar-nominated performance that many critics have hailed as the best of his career. Colin Firth is deeply moving as a man teetering on the edge of despair, giving the film the heart it might otherwise lack.

George is, as the title flags up, a man entirely defined by the loss of his lover. The film opens with his morning ritual, a process he refers to as 'becoming George'. As he buttons up his smart suit and polishes his shoes, he constructs a persona to present to the world. But he is hollow on the inside. 'By the time I've dressed, I know fully what part I am supposed to play,' he remarks. 'Looking back at me from the mirror isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament.' His best friend Charley (Julianne Moore), abandoned by her husband and son and with little in her life apart from George and the gin bottle, is in a similar position. She is defined by what she has lost rather than by what she has or is: 'Living in the past is my future,' she jokes, but even her laugh sounds dangerously like a sob.

'Wasn't it really just a substitute for something else?' she asks George, concerning his relationship with Jim. She means a substitute for a heterosexual relationship, but as he points out, her broken marriage failed to provide a solid foundation for her life. There is a sense in which any relationship with a flawed, mortal human being can only ever be a substitute for a greater hope. Ultimately we do not have control over our circumstances, and even if we live our lives 'by the book', risking nothing, there is no guarantee of happiness or fulfilment. 'I've done everything I was supposed to,' says Charley despairingly, 'and now all I have to keep me company is a bottle of gin.' When life is going well we can shelter ourselves from the fact that our happiness is fragile. When tragedy tears away the things that have given us meaning, our frail foundations are laid bare and we are left with a cry like Charley's: 'What am I doing here? Tell me, what?'

The era in which the film is set gives a particular pertinence to questions of meaning in the face of mortality. With the threat of a nuclear strike hanging over their heads, the characters are all forced to face the fact that whatever they build in life may soon be swept away. But as George points out, the prospect of annihilation by A-bomb only intensifies and makes immediate that which is a reality anyway. 'Death is the future,' he tells Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), a perceptive student. 'It may not be your immediate future but it's what we all share.' George is living his last day in a world perhaps destined for imminent destruction, populated by people who are all inevitably destined to die. The sound of ticking clocks and pounding heartbeats permeates every scene, eating into every second of George's life. We are reminded that if we truly had a sense of perspective on the brevity of our lives, we might all experience the world the way that George experiences his final day. We might appreciate the beauty and wonder inherent in the most everyday occurrences: we might keenly understand the need for a purpose far greater than ourselves.

'I feel really alone most of the time,' says Kenny. 'I mean, we're born alone, we die alone, and while we're here we're absolutely and completely sealed in our own bodies.' Agreeing, George remarks that 'The only thing that's made the whole thing worthwhile has been those times when I've truly been able to connect with another human being.' Our relationships can feel like the only transcendent thing in a passing world, and this is why we cling to them more than anything else. But when they fail us, we are faced with the possibility that death and human failure really can annihilate meaning. Our connections with others are only truly transcendent if they can point us to something beyond the reach of loss and decay.

George does not draw such a conclusion in so many words. But he does confess, as his day draws to a close, to having glimpses of something greater:

A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity. When, for a few seconds, the silence drowns out the noise, and I can feel rather than think. And things seem so sharp, and the world seems so fresh. It's as though it had all just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything they fade. I've lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realise that everything is exactly the way it's meant to be.

These moments of grace, in which George is able to rise above himself and glimpse a deeper pattern and meaning to the world, are not illusory. Hope is not a delusion, or a passing mood, but the greater reality that we lose sight of when we build our lives on things that will pass away. The voice of God is the 'gentle whisper' (1 Kings 19:12) that can drown out the clamour of all the other things we are tempted to live for. He offers what the Bible describes as 'a living hope' (1 Peter 1:3, NIV), a hope that can outlast terrible circumstances and even death because it is built on something unchanging and eternal. God's promise of true and lasting relationship with him, if we take hold of it, will never die or disappoint.

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