So we were walking down the stairs of the Barbican Centre, talking about the film we had just seen. It was dark already and I was struck again by the view of the city that one has from there -the impunity of looking from above, and then the weird feeling of being in a crater by the time you reach the ground floor.
In the short walk that separates Cinema 2 from the stairs we had already agreed that the ending (and the beginning to a lesser extent) was 'properly lame', as one of my friends put it. It was a cheap trick, a cop-out led by the voice-over of a dead man... Colin Firth's glasses, however, were a remarkable achievement. And so was his grey flannel suit with a narrow tie and a clip. In fact, two of us preferred his work outfit to his evening choices. So there we were, discussing the achievements and shortcomings of A single man, when one of my friends overheard a woman walking behind us say: 'typical gays, discussing the glasses rather than the film...'.
But it was all about the glasses, Madam! How could one possibly talk about the film without engaging with the glasses (and the tie)? It is quite odd that someone could think about George Falconer (the lead character, driving force and centre of the narrative) detached from his physical appearance. And by extension, that one could think about the 'story' abstracting it from its material composition. So I was quite happy to endorse the superficiality she attributed to being gay, since a dedicated attention to the surfaces and textures of the filmed matter is always a good place to start when analysing a film. Those fabrics will lead us to the workshops and the tailors that made them.
[foto: i.m.g. 'barbican #11']
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