Thanks, southerndmd, for the background info. I am afraid you have not persuaded me. Tom Ford may be gay and out, but he is not alone in getting this film to the world. SM is there because the straight movie industry wanted it to be. Nothing you say addresses my main concern that films like SM are meant to be warnings about the hazards of being gay, and it is better to "choose" to be straight. I am disturbed that a gay man would direct, produce, co-write, and even add a more dire element like the suicide motif to the film. Why would Ford cooperate with the straight movie establishment to do this? From what you say, Ford is the one trapped in an outdated mindset which the straight movie industry is all too willing to go along with. Whatever the merits of the original novel, it is not that I am criticizing: It was written in 1964, another time, another space. The film was 2009, a time when those connected to the film should have known better.
Contrast SM with the 1987 UK film Maurice. Forster wrote and revised his novel from 1913 to 1960. .We don't have the earlier drafts to look at, but I bet they were far grimmer than the final version. The film Maurice predates Single Man by 22 years, and, wonderfully, rejects the gay-as-tortured-victim theme. Against far more oppression than George faced, Maurice manages to struggle on and find Alec Scudder to settle down with. (We would all kill for an Alec Scudder to wander in.) Maurice should have marked a new beginning to gay-theme movies, not have been a unique surprise.
Ah, milomorris. I have come to look forward to your cavalry charges against my postings, LOL. Keep it up. First, I know that George did not kill himself, but died of a heart attack. But, either way the same anti-gay warning is there. I accept your point that it is unfair of me to impose a limit on grief either for time or depth. A year is not necessarily long enough, and the profundity of his sorrow is not mine to criticize. God knows, I should know this. I think I was speaking more to myself than to George when I said to man-up and move on.
I hope you will understand when I say that it is your last paragraph that really troubles me. You come out of both racial and sexual minorities, so perhaps you are the best one to speak here. Part of me agrees that whether Black and/or gay, we have to appeal to society at large for "humanization" and showing "that we can be just as multidimensional as heteros." After all, straight white lawmakers pass Civil Rights Acts and same-sex marriage laws. They have the power; we do not. Crudely put, we have to know what to kiss and when.
But a deep part of me cries out that this is wrong. We shouldn't have to grovel before them pleading for an end to bullying, bashing, imprisonment and death. As I have gotten older I have come around to the Brian Kinney (QaF) school of attitudes toward the straight world: " Screw 'em all." From your replies to my postings, I know you know this already. Frankly, I cannot resolve the dissonance in my own mind between these two positions, and it bothers me. I am reminded of the line in the Shawn Kirchner BBM song, "You'll never know in your shadows what I can see in the sun." You are in the sun and I am in the shadows. Sadly, films like Single Man just remind me how dark those shadows can be.