“Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine.”
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, back to my blog. Our short hiatus has brought us right to our halfway point: Number 5. And let me assure you, it is not one that will disappoint.
Released in 2017, considered to me one of the modern golden years of cinema, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name started out as an more indie style movie, but quickly transformed into one of the most lauded films of the year.
The film follows Elio, a 17 year old boy living in his family’s beautiful home in Italy for the summer. His father, an archaeologist, brings in one graduate student to stay and work with him throughout the course of summer. Cue Oliver. The film is magnificent from the get go, as you find yourself in the most beautiful home and landscapes of Crema, Italy. Remember that nostalgia I told you about before, setting so beautiful it felt as though I missed it myself? I immediately felt myself longing for the trees and streams and cobblestone roads of a 1980s Italy. The film explores the relationship between Oliver and Elio, one that begins as tense and confusing, but evolves into one of the most magnificent and honest displays of true and utter passion and love. Below is the scene in which Elio confesses how he feels to Oliver. “Because I wanted you to know…”
One of my favorite things about the film is its’ subtly in dialogue. Much of the emotions and feelings of the characters are expressed through body language, through the scenery itself. Guadagnino does not rely on flashy words or loaded, tense words to convey the love and pain felt by these characters, but allows for them to do so in a simple touch, or glance, or movement around a statue. Another tool utilized throughout the film is music. I have said before and I will say again- music in film can add a whole other dimension to a work, can bring out emotions that you did not even know you had in a matter of a few chords. The driving song of the film was Sufjan Stevens’ “Mystery of Love”, beautiful and haunting and echoing around your soul with a feeling of hopefulness, but also slight sorrow and loss: just like Elio and Oliver’s love for one another.
And finally, the selling point for me in our midway movie was, of course, Timothée Chalamet. I had not known who Chalamet was before the film, other than slight recognition of his face from small roles. He became all the buzz- I saw the movie right when it came out, and it was as if to watch a sun explode across the sky with my own eyes. Once unknown, now regarded as the hope for Hollywood, standing to be one of the greatest actors of all time. How can one performance allow people to even consider giving him such a title? Well, if that one performance was as incredible and indescribable as Timmy’s, then that title is earned without a doubt. Timothée has a way of making you feel as though you are in love for the first time; not necessarily with him, but with the world, with words, with life. He makes you want to be better, forces you to get out of your bed and do something by being the most paramount example of human ability. Someone that good has the capability to make me want to sing and dance and write sonnets, just because I want to prove to myself I can. Below is by far the greatest scene of the film; no context is needed for your heart to ache at the slow, silent tears down Elio’s face, his face a lit with the glow of a fire that proves the only thing that is left to warm his heart.