A Single Man

How would you spend your last day? Perhaps you'd indulge in a final burst of hedonism. Or maybe, like George, you'd be considerate enough to put your worldly affairs in order (documents, keys, letters) George is saying his goodbye to the world without the world really noticing - apart from perhaps one unexpected person. The prevalence of clocks in the first half of the film countdown the time to what is the *really* important event of his day. Work and socializing are now just waystations on the journey towards death. He's a man so practised at presenting a facade that most people don't think that anything is amiss.
As one of an "invisible minority", he hides in plain sight. If he was a bereaved man who'd lost his wife, society would be rushing forward with tea and sympathy. Instead he's lost his boyfriend and it doesn't matter that their relationship had lasted longer than friends' marriages, a point brought crushingly home home when George's oldest friend Charley drunkenly describes it as a substitute for a "real" (heterosexual) relationship. George's reaction here is very different to that seen in flashback when he first received the news of Jim's death, his numbed, grief-stricken response only heightened by the information that it's a family-only funeral (clearly loving someone for 16 years doesn't make you "family") The gulf in understanding and compassion is etched across George's expression as he struggles to maintain control. Yet the warmly-lit, comfortable domestic scene we witness - George and Jim on the sofa, reading amusingly opposite books, with the dogs dozing close by - illustrates both the love they share and precisely why George feels he can no longer live. Grief has overwhelmed his perception of life, to the extent that a warning sign in the early signs is completely overlooked.
It's undeniably slow, though not without humour - George has some nicely sardonic lines and Julianne Moore is always great value - and designed to within an inch of its life, yet it gets inside George's mindset without making him come across as self-pitying, and it saves the most bitter irony for last.