A Single Man (2009)

George Falconer (Colin Firth) is a single man, and doubly so. First, he's a gay professor in Los Angeles in the early sixties, and so we're taken back to all the indignities of living in the closet or, as one character puts it, as "invisible" people. Even a close friend describes his partner as a "substitute" for marriage even though George's relationship lasted twice as long as hers. George is also single because he lost his partner of sixteen years in a car accident. He's deeply mired in human grief, and if he's melodramatic, he says, it's because "my heart has been broken." His life proceeds in slow motion, the friendly overtures of neighbors fall on deaf ears, and even the radio news of the Cuban missile crisis barely registers with him. Flashbacks haunt him with memories of better days with his partner. When he leaves for work, he packs a pistol in his suitcase, and what happens with this pistol and why at the end of the movie was very unsatisfying to me. The two reasons for George's singleness run as parallel rather than integrated stories. Colin Firth received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Falconer.