Warning: Spoliers below the fold.
Male gaze, female gaze. This one's meant for anyone's gaze.
Holy crap, is this movie pretty. I mean, look at it. Shit.
Colin Firth? Beautiful. Lee Pace? Beautiful. Clothes? Beautiful.
Everything is so over stylized, and I think that's to forget that the movie is actually kind of boring. The parts I do remember paying full attention to are a) the dinner date with Julianne Moore, b) the phone call notifying George of Jim's death, and c) Jim and George's first meeting at the bar. And even that last one I was kinda forcing myself to pay attention (this is why I shouldn't see movies like this after 9 pm).
But, I enjoyed a lot of the shots. Obviously Tom Ford knew what colors would comprise and punctuate his movie. But a few collections of decent and interesting shots do not a full movie make.
Also, could that ending been have more heavy handed with its irony? Jesus. I kinda wish instead we could have seen what would have happened with the suicide sleeping bag.
However, I will admit, the opening scene, where George wakes to another another day without Jim, really got to me. Not so much the dream sequence, but rather George lying in bed, awake, realizing where he was, and what had happened ... even 8 months later something feeling totally fresh as if it had happened minutes ago. I felt that. I'm currently going through a poor mental health spell, so seeing that raised up all of my own internal ... issues. Completely without words. And how you know you should be over it, or need to be over it as possible to maintain or regain a sense of normalcy ... yeah. Been there.
So yeah. This movie was pretty (in visuals), yet plain (in plot), all at the same time. And I guess I just wanted it to be Colin Firth crying for an hour and a half.
