The name of Tom Ford, the American fashion designer, often befits the sparkly narrows of a catwalk, or perhaps the bottled indulgence of a perfume. Some might even recognise him from the title of Jay-Z’s 2013 track. In the world of cinema, his name carries weight too. As of late, such weight has been reignited by the rumours of Ford’s imminent return to cinema. Some might argue that 2027 isn’t exactly close. However, it is close enough to intrigue me. His 2016 release, Nocturnal Animals, an adaptation of the 1993 novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright, was a deep, sombre affair that conjured up a gnarly, engaging neo-noir narrative, crammed full of viscera and discomfort. It was a complex film, explosive enough to solidify his name in the realm of serious filmmaking. Despite the success of his sophomore release, it was his debut film, A Single Man, that earmarked Ford’s stellar visionary powers.
A 2009 romantic period drama, A Single Man, like Nocturnal Animals, was an adaptation of a novel for the screen. Inspired by Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Ford’s film delves into the grief-ridden twilight years of George Falconer (Colin Firth), a British university professor living in 1960s California. Uprooted by the death of his longtime partner Jim, George’s life is caught in the crosshairs of his self-reflection on the meaning that his life has left. Sombre and suicidal, George’s world is brought to life by Ford not as a depressive swansong but more so as an investigation into his vulnerability as a gay man, feeling unloved and alone amongst a society where his identity must be hidden. The tenderness exhibited by George is responded to in Carson McCullers’ poem ‘Saraband’, where grief and vulnerability are navigated. For McCullers, the strategic manipulation of repression and suffering is modelled as a process of endurance, where one is challenged to survive against the current of external pressures.
McCuller’s poem is a text complicated by its enigmatic phrasing and messaging. However, despite such complexity, the poem operates as an attempt to untangle the triviality and difficulties of life. The poem’s title is a metaphorical repurposing of a 17th-century Spanish dance where the slow and graceful movements mirror a way of moving through life and its various challenges. In using this metaphor, McCullers invites the reader to see the contrast of living with ease in a world that is rife with difficulty. Like most dances, the choreographed act of movement reflects life, as humans frequently find themselves choreographing their actions to shape how they appear to others.
Throughout this poetic meditation on the human condition, the speaker advises the reader to make choices that avoid suffering: “Select your sorrows if you can, Edit your ironies, even grieve with guile. Adjust to a world divided.” The conscious inclusion of verbs such as “select,” “edit,” and “adjust” highlights the speaker’s guidance as a form of instructional support. The rigid, almost mechanical use of these words as conscious processes helps unveil some truth about the human need to make choices to avoid the abrasiveness of life itself. In this call to adopt chameleonic tendencies, or at least to consciously shape one’s life, the speaker embeds this messaging into the topic of identity. Such advice might ring true for the marginalised in society, those who have to tweak themselves to camouflage their authentic identity.
In Ford’s film, George’s sexuality motivates him to “edit,” or “adjust.” Throughout the film, society’s inability to accept homosexuality acts as a barrier to George’s authenticity. Following the off-screen death of his partner, Jim, George is refused an invitation to his funeral. In the words of Jim’s cousin (the bearer of the news) to George, it wouldn’t be appropriate because they were just ‘friends’. Whether the family rebuff George because of their unspoken knowledge of Jim and his homosexuality or because the funeral is for family only, George’s lack of an invite heightens the tragedy of his loss. This limitation reveals a profound issue: that George’s relationship with Jim was marketed as a friendship, as an advertised means of adjusting to society. Thus, George’s mourning and grief are marginalized, not only because of his sexuality, but also because of his need to mask it as something else. In McCuller’s poem, this is explored in further depth: “The world that jibes your tenderness /Jails your lust.” Like George, the speaker’s audience is reminded of the limitations placed on them. This use of the verb “to jail” invites us to understand the restrictive powers of societal influence that limit people’s ability to be themselves, and also the proactive means by which individual identity is criminalized.
Elsewhere in the film, George’s close relationship with his friend Charley (Julianne Moore) sheds further light on the human tendency of curating the ‘Self’. Despite their closeness and their evident personal history, Charley and George’s relationship is home to a striking division. For George, who relies on Charley as a confidante to his authentic self, where his sexuality is accepted and unhidden, Charley's hidden desire to have a romantic relationship with him echoes the sentiments of the poem with increasing clarity. The scene where both are seen dancing and intimately reminiscing about their friendship helps to invite the poem’s metaphor of the saraband into further discussion. Here, in the comfort of their shared dance, the rift is imagined more clearly, as both of them share the dance and their own hidden selves in the unity of a shared covenant of self-curation for the sake of others. In the poem, the final line “Beat on the ocean's floor the same saraband” returns to the metaphor of the saraband as a cosmic, enduring, and impersonal force that continues regardless of human struggle. Like the dance shared between George and Charley, the saraband symbolises the need for humans to dance in avoidance of strife, an act of survival that adjusts in response to the threat of disappointment.
The speaker mentions that the ocean floor is also home to “the bones of Hart Crane, sailors and the drugstore man.” In attaching this imagery alongside the closing line’s remark, they suggest that fatality is closely bound to the submergence of identity. The specificity of those whose bones can be found on the ocean floor intelligently, yet subtly, points towards the conclusiveness of suicide as an escape from the act of covertly hiding one’s identity. By naming the poet Hart Crane, who is believed to have fatally jumped from a moving ship in an attempt at suicide, the speaker invites us to speculate that the need to “edit,” “select,” and “adjust” as advised at the start of the poem invites unfortunate long-term consequences due to repression. George’s own fate mirrors such a melancholic suggestion. At the film’s opening, George openly measures out his plans to kill himself due to the grief of Jim’s passing. Structurally, Ford expands our concern for George because, since we first encounter him, we are aware of his intentions and therefore hope something changes his mind. Thankfully, George’s experiences throughout the film provide him with enough clarity and comfort to dissuade him, but a sudden fatal heart attack augments the tragedy of his life. The cruel irony of this stings. His intention to remain alive is usurped and, like the poem, the looming spectre of death pervades and returns to illuminate a harsh truth. In our attempts to “select our sorrows,” we limit ourselves. For the sake of ease over authenticity, we condemn ourselves.
In both ‘Saraband’ and A Single Man, survival is framed not as triumph but as negotiation. McCullers’ imperative to “select,” “edit,” and “adjust” finds visual embodiment in George’s careful self-curation, a life lived in quiet modulation to avoid social violence. Yet both texts ultimately expose the cost of such restraint. The saraband—slow, deliberate, enduring— becomes less a graceful dance than a choreography of containment, a measured performance designed to withstand a hostile world.
Through George’s isolation, his muted grief, and his final, ironic death, Ford suggests that adaptation may preserve dignity, but it cannot fully protect the self from erosion. Likewise, McCullers’ submerged imagery warns that what is repressed does not disappear; it sinks, accumulates, and hardens beneath the surface. Whether through the bones on the ocean floor or the stillness of George’s final moments, both works insist that authenticity cannot indefinitely survive under the pressure of concealment. In attempting to soften sorrow, one risks diluting the self, and the dance of endurance, however graceful, becomes inseparable from loss.
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J.A.G Mabbutt is a poet, avid cinephile and writer. He has had both his poetry and writing published with Zimmer Magazine, Film East and Scribbled in the past year. Online you can find his poetry via @jag_poetry on instagram. In his day-to-day life, he is an English teacher based in Leicestershire. He studied at the University of Liverpool, receiving a degree in English Literature and History.