Imagined reality

Before we find out about Jim's (Matthew Goode) death, we see George's (Colin Firth) imagined discovery of his car crash in the snow. We cut into a wide establishing shot of the area, smoke from the car and Jim's blood bringing life to the frame. Then George enters. As he moves towards Jim's lifeless body, we dolly behind him, the surrounding snow-covered landscape almost surreal--probably indicative of the sequence's fabricated reality within the film. When I witnessed the actual occurrence of George hearing about Jim's death, a much more bleak, uneventful, anticlimactic experience in which he simply receives a phone call, I instantly recalled the snow car-crash sequence and adapted this moment to the rest of the film, especially whenever the hue of the film changed (which happened a lot, and more consistently towards the end of the film). Most of what happens in the film--film color, abstract/surreal sequences, flashbacks--resembles George's distorted view of reality. Most of life is grim, mundane, lifeless. When he becomes elated, so too does his surroundings, his encounters with people, his attitude. Throughout the film, whenever a change in one of these elements occurred, I began to think about how it related to the entire film, how it related to all of the elements of the film, and how it related to Tom Ford and his views expressed in the film. These changes in George's psyche emphasize his isolation from society as a homosexual, and also as having lost a loved one. Everyone continues life as though everything were perfect, including and especially in the scene in which George drives by the "perfect" suburban family--a daughter and son playing in the yard, the father on his way to work, the mother going about doing household tasks. His existence as an isolated figure distort his psyche in multiple ways, of which we are subtly experiencing throughout the film.