A comedy and a drama: two fabulous films that deal with taking control of your life. For Jay Baruchel as Trotsky amidst the apathy, boredom and ‘oppression’ of school and a ‘Fascist’ father. For Colin Firth the apathy, numbness of the college professor after the loss of his 13 year relationship with his lover in a car crash.
Both films ask the question: What do I do, can I, and is it worth it to affect any change? Trotsky to effect social change, A Single Man personal, intimate change to continue to live.
THE TROTSKY is a brash wonderful look at the efforts of an idealistic young man who thinks he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. His efforts to unionize his father’s business and later to unionize the student body at the public high school he has been sent to after private school has been denied him are outrageous, funny and heart felt.
When the author was in high school, I shant reveal when, students of the city went out on ‘strike’ as a result of the school board locking out the teacher’s. I was also on the picket line when local 2251 Steelworker’s went out on strike at the steel plant the same year. To watch Jay Barushel and a wonderful Canadian cast execute this polemic against apathy and boredom rekindled the reason’s social justice and caring are not irrelevent and misplaced. We live in an age were communal aspirations and the fight against total domination by authorities, whether a Texas school board against sex education or a giant corporation privatizing profit and socializing debt, must be dealt with.
The Trotsky accomplishes this with humour, wit, charm and principle. The added bonus is that it is a Canadian film. Kudos to Jay Baruchel, Domini Blyth, Genevive Bujold, Anne Marie Cadeaux, Jesse Camacho, Colm Feore, Emily Hampshire, David Julian Hersh, Tiio Horn, Ricky Mabe, Michael Murphy, Jessica Pare, Tommy Amber Pire, and the incomparable Saul Rubinek. Written and directed with love by Jacob Tierney.
A SINGLE MAN is a beautiful, delicate walk through grief and the appreciation of now. Through the memory of the relationship of his deceased partner and the compassion of a student in the professor’s class that brings him to the appreciation of the moments lived and to be lived in the here in now, Colin Firth’s performance is luminous.
I don’t want to give away the plot of the film for it is essential to the catharsis of the audience member. There are moments in this film that are so intimate that I felt like I should turn away so that I wouldn’t intrude on the delicacy of the interchange for fear of ruining the completion of the understanding of the moment.
The Music in A Single Man is haunting, captivating and mesmerizing. A small but big film, A Single Man.
Both these films have learning as a central theme. The student body learning that the past can help them in the here and now with the institution that leaves them apathetic and bored. The institutional man shaken out of torpor by accident and learning to live in the present through seeing the individual student.
Effective and affective, THE TROTSKY and THE SINGLE MAN.
Dwight McFee
