“You took the best / Now take the rest,” the blues singer offers her lover in despair. But Peter Jackson, adapting Alice Sebold’s overrated but fairly touching bestseller The Lovely Bones, did just the opposite: he took the worst of the book and gave it cinematic shine, then merely skimmed the rest. This tale of a murdered fourteen-year-old whose spirit hovers over her b (...)
Screen
Restless Spirits
‘The Lovely Bones’ & ‘A Single Man’
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Richard Alleva,
You do not seem to read films in terms of their imagery but what else are films? It seems to me a legitimate and possibly Christian reading of 'A Single Man' is this.
Two images set the principle questions and story of the film. The underwater scenes at the opening and troughout ask Is birth/life or rebirth/death worth their struggle? The persistence of eyes watching throughout the film asks Who finally is watching anyone's life? Both images anticipate the film's endingin which we see a death following a choice of life.
Both questions according to the imagery unfolded in the film suppose not only others but also an Other, leaving one final question. For anyone, who might those others represent?