The film A Single Man, which releases today in an expanded number of theaters upon Colin Firth’s Oscar nod, has been the subject of much analysis in the media recently. Has it been snubbed in a handful of deserving Oscar categories? Did efforts to market it deliberately gloss over the fact that this is a film about a gay man’s grief? Has Tom Ford gone too far by telling the media that the film is not a gay film, presumably to boost its appeal to the masses?
Ford has, in fact, received much praise for his directorial debut; Peter Travers of Rolling Stone crowned him a “visionary,” while the Telegraph pronounced his work an “immaculate conception.” But for fervent Christopher Isherwood fans, the film strays too much from the book, adding scenes and missing themes that were central to the author’s intent.
To address this, the London Times has interviewed Isherwood’s surviving partner Don Bachardy, who had a hand in the making of the film. He says:
“My advice to Tom Ford was the same advice Chris gave to young screenwriters adapting books. He always advised them to make it their own, to not try to reproduce the book in movie form. He had my backing to make it his own and that’s what he did.”
Read the article here.
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