Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Visual Parallels: A Single Man + The Hours

By s. Tuesday, October 20, 2015 , ,
Stephen Daldry's The Hours and Tom Ford's A Single Man are both beautiful movies dealing with the subject of loneliness. The first follows three women, each living in different time, but each of them hopelessly stuck in their lives. The second shows a day of a man who lost his lover and is set on killing himself.

The proximity, the invitation of death is everywhere in these movies but not as much as life is - the sadness of the characters is contrasted so vividly with the color of the flowers, the beauty of the characters' surroundings and finally with childlike innocence - curiously both films have a scene where the protagonist shares some of the painful truth with a child - perhaps because they know a child won't understand enough of it, yet it is still a human being they can confide in. This clash is also even more apparant in that the little girls just begin their lives and the characters they interact with are about to meet the end of theirs.

There are more similarities - the deafening, cleansing power of water - used in both films in fantasy sequences where the characters imagine their final escape, the grief that comes with looking at the photograph of someone we loved, the theme of forbidden love misunderstood by the society. But as usual, let the images speak for themselves:

I want to make something clear - I thought that it was clear with the name of the series but the quick look at the websites linking the parallels posts with comments saying that I'm grasping for straws (and that's the only quotable one) made me realize it's not - this it not a series based on parallels I think are intentional. As the name clearly states these are simply visual parallels I noticed. So if you choose to leave rude comments about it, it just means one thing - you are illiterate, so kindly leave my website and do not link to it.


21 comments:

  1. Love love love. Visual Parallels is one of my favorite features ever. And this reminds me that I really need to rewatch both of these films. Great job!

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    1. Thanks so much! both of these movies are in my top 50 of all time and man I hope Ford gives us another movie soon

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  2. Oh what a beautiful post. This just makes me remember how brilliant both of these films are. My personal favourite is the one with Moore on the bed paired with the body drifting in the water. Great work, as usual!

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    1. Thank you! I love both sequences, they are seemingly out of place but the directors make them work so well in the respective films

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  3. I love these posts and I totally get what the idea of the visual parallels is. And no rude comment should be ever made about the amount of work and attention to detail you put in these posts!

    And this post reminds me that I still haven't seen The Hours.

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    1. Thanks so much! Oh God, you need to see The Hours! It's really a fantastic film

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  4. Oh, those are nice parallels. Not a fan of The Hours but then again, I'm not a fan of Stephen Daldry as a filmmaker but you do make a great case about how it compares to a film as great as A Single Man.

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    1. Thank you! I don't much like Daldry's other films but I simply loved The Hours

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  5. Great post! I haven't seen The Hours, but it looks amazing. Both films look amazing.

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    1. Thank you! I hope you get to see The Hours soon, it's such a beautiful movie

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  6. Love this feature (and fuck those randoms who leave you nasty comments)

    This makes me want to see The Hours, I've never seen it. I know, embarrassing.

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    1. Thank you! God why did so many people not see The hours?! :D

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  7. I always love your visual parallel posts. Great choices here. I really enjoyed both films. I also like your disclaimer! I have been trolled multiple times this year. So I just delete their comments. I feel like it's my page. If someone trolls me their comment will be deleted. I'm really tired of people coming to my page and telling me what "they think" I should write. They can write what they want on their own pages.

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    1. The thing that bothers me is that when its linked from some forum I cannot even write 'hey it's visual not intentional parallels'. If it happens here I at least get to shame them :lol:

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  8. I always look forward to these posts. Amazing work, as usual. :)

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  9. GURL, the dedication you put into these posts in this series is incredible. I LOVE THESE, and this one is no exception. Some of these visual parallels are insanely acute, especially the last one.

    Haters to the left...there's no grasping here!

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    1. Thanks so much! It was actually fun finding those, the only ones I had in my mind while starting were the ones with Kidman/Firth lying on the bed and the water parallel

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  10. Two beautiful films, it only makes sense that they would be visually connected in some way. Love this post and love the parallels that you chose.

    (Also people making dumb comments are the worst, if they don't understand your intention then that's their problem, not yours.)

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    1. Thank you so much! Yeah the douchy comments are so ignorant :/ Like, it's there in the name of the feature, people!

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  11. I just love your visual parallels series! It actually inspired me to do the "Compare and Contrast" series on my movie blog!

    I can't believe that people would leave hateful comments on these posts. Just ignore them and continue making these awesome posts!

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