A Weekend of Firth

I did not do it on purpose, but I happened to rent two recent movies starring Colin Firth this weekend. I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, but I kept allowing life to interfere with my blogging. ;)

As many of you probably know, I’ve had a crush on Colin Firth since Pride and – nay, since he played older Colin in the Hallmark version of The Secret Garden.

And of course, I just happened to rent his two movies from 2009 – Dorian Gray and A Single Man – on the same weekend. Not intentionally, of course, but I had checked out A Single Man from the library, and lo and behold, Netflix delivered Dorian Gray into my hot little hands (not the man, the movie).

Steve said that he wanted no part of ASM because it “looked depressing,” so I watched it by myself. I had no idea what it was about, just that it was an Oscar-nominated performance. After a few minutes, I was completely hooked into the story. Loss and grief, portrayed against the backdrop of an incredible taboo of a time of fear and paranoia. Basically, Colin Firth loses his long-term partner to a car crash, and it is his story of how he sees the world differently with the absence of his partner weighing on his every action. It is set during the Cuban missile crisis, and the political temperature plays heavily into the story. Colin Firth was brilliant, as was Julianne Moore as his best friend.

The next evening, we watched Dorian Gray, which is one of my favorite books, being as most know, a huge devotee of Oscar Wilde. The movie deviated from the book in several ways: to begin, I felt that Ben Barnes, cute as he may be, was seriously miscast as Dorian. For one thing, Dorian is blonde in the book. His acting was good enough, and don’t shoot me for this, but I kind of felt that physically, Robert Pattinson would have been a more suitable actor, based on looks alone.

There’s also a pretty hokey love story included, and in that respect, I felt that Ben Barnes was wonderful. He was very good at the romantic, sweet side of Dorian, not so much the vile, arrogant side. But back to Firth!

It was strange to go from seeing Colin Firth playing the bereaved professor in ASM to Henry, purveyor of carnal delights to Dorian Gray. It was interesting, the turn his character made when Dorian fell in love with Henry’s grown daughter.

All in all, A Single Man A++

Dorian Gray B-