Gay or Straight, We All Deal with Loss and Grief the Same Way

Losing someone you love intensely is painful. Straight men and women do not have a lock on grief at the loss of a spouse or a long time love. Grief is universal. It cuts through you like a knife and turns everything you thought you had and everything you thought you knew on end. If you’ve felt this soul searing pain, you have my condolences.

In 2006 the movie  Brokeback Mountain played on screens in select theaters around the country to wide critical acclaim. It told the love story of two men (played by Jake Gyllenhal and the late Heath Ledger) who were trapped by time and place and who, as a result, were never able to fully be with each other. When one dies near the end of the film, the other is filled with the intense pains of grief at his loss not only of his lover but of what could have been. Still, the film is more about their lives then it is about the death of one of them.

In 2009, Tom Ford – of fashion design fame – made his directorial debut with the powerful movie, “A Single Man” a 1960s period film starring Colin Firth living a day in the life of a closeted gay college professor grieving the loss of his long-term life partner and Julianne Moore as his best friend and confidant. The film, incidentally, is based on a novel of the same title by author Christopher Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986, RIP).

Firth’s character George is brilliant and funny and lonely and, most of all, profoundly sad. As his day progresses, he plods through his life while alternating between memories in vivid color and the present in sepia tones. He tries to put on the mask of a brave face in front of his colleagues who don’t know about his loss, but he fails to fool an astute student who senses his need for a friend.

Director Ford captures all of the nuances of Isherwood’s writing with his adaption of the book into a screenplay. Isherwood wrote A Single Man in a stream of consciousness style which carries into the film. The movie is intense with real, raw human emotion. You can feel the love and joy that George shared with his partner Jim. You’re heart will go out to him on witnessing his pain. You’ll understand his loss with no regard at all to his sexuality. It’s not a gay movie. It’s a human movie.