When you think about it, films are what story-telling has become post-introduction of motion picture. They are supposed to do more than just entertain (although, some days, people just want to be entertained). They are supposed to tell you something of worth. They are supposed to stay lodged in the back of your mind, rendering you incapable of leaving it behind at the theater.
Everywhere you go from that point forward, your reception of the world has changed. The values you have adopted as a result of the film will change the way you interact with your life, and I wish this was an exaggeration.
I don’t mean this in a very large way (i.e. existential crisis). Rather, simple concepts that you’ve never given much thought to are suddenly turned on their heads. This forces you to see them for the construed ideologies that they are. They can be big but, in my case, they are usually small things. With that being said, allow me to talk about my latest theatrical adventure: Call Me by Your Name.
Call Me by Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino, is the film based on a novel written by André Aciman. It revolves around the relationship between Oliver (Armie Hammer) and Elio (Timothée Chalamet) which, at first, seems tense and awkward. But then it slowly turns into something more intimate. Oliver is a graduate student and summer intern for a professor studying the Greco-Roman culture in northern Italy. Elio, on the other hand, is the aforementioned professor’s 17-year-old son. You know, from the trailer, that this isn’t going to be like a Nicholas Sparks movie. First of all, and most obviously, the main couple is gay. Second, this is not a glorified relationship.
When I say, “This is not glorified relationship,” I’m not saying that to mean that it is not worthy of respect or equally as beautiful. Rather, this relationship is extremely relateable, and it is as such due to the fact that it is vulnerable and painful. As much as we love Nicholas Sparks, it is definitely love in an exaggerated sense. Call Me by Your Name takes love and makes it human. It makes it mortal and then says, “We’ve all been there.” You know this in the way Elio’s reluctance and emotional turmoil seem all too familiar. Everything he feels in his rawest moments are written in the way his face involuntarily contorts, and the lump in your throat forms not because everything about the scene screams sadness. It forms because every ounce of pain and fear is displayed on the screen, and it is so easily translatable because, again, we’ve been there. That, or we have been afraid of getting to that point. Either way, it is a very telling sign that the movie knows exactly what it is addressing.
Love, in this day and age, is treated like a power play. If you are not in control of the situation, you are bound to lose. It’s to the point where some people my age can’t even feel comfortable saying the word. With that being said, I felt that this movie sought out to make you uncomfortable on purpose. There are both innocent and explicit scenes that make you shift in your seat because you are subconsciously coming to the conclusion that love is both ugly and beautiful. The movie doesn’t give you time to determine how you feel about that and instead launches you into a whirlwind of emotions.
When Elio is happy with Oliver, it’s cute and the audience fully supports it. It is clear that there is a very intimate connection between the two. When Elio is broken, questioning himself, or trying to cover up what he obviously feels, it’s heartbreaking. Call Me by Your Name shows you just what love can do to you, but it doesn’t tell you to run away from it. Instead it asks you, “Why not stay?”
A very clear sign of this is in the way his parents react as they slowly begin to realize what is happening. They write it off as a very nice relationship between Oliver and Elio, although it’s obvious they know. Their accepting and seemingly blind nature makes it clear that they intend to allow everything to happen as it will. Do they know what will happen more than Elio? My bet is probably not, but they aren’t trying to convince Elio out of it. This in and of itself provides for very long conversations about parenting in light of homosexuality, but that is a conversation for later.
Returning to the movie, the audience most likely sides with Elio: hide as much emotion as you can. Avoid all interaction. When Elio decides to tell Oliver how he feels, he does so in very elusive terms that a friend of mine and I agreed we never would have caught. But that just goes to show the kind of connection Oliver and Elio have. Anyway, that too is relatable because when you express your feelings to someone it’s not easy. You don’t want to say what you actually mean and, when you decide to take that leap of faith, it may not come out as straight forward as it could have. We get that, and the movie had us all sinking into our seats during this scene. But we were also hopeful.
It is this ounce of hope that keeps Elio going (and other things, I’m sure). It’s also what moves the audience to finally be open to what is happening. Obviously, we don’t have a choice; it’s a film, but we forget for a moment how things can take a turn for the worse. We latch onto that hope, just like Elio does.
Eventually, Elio’s exact fate comes to him. The audience knew this was coming but we were still left heartbroken. I remember thinking, “I can’t even begin to imagine what Elio is feeling right now.” and then, “Wow, Elio isn’t even real.” Which then also broke my heart because Timothée Chalamet’s rendition of Elio was so real and emotionally raw, it was hard to imagine Elio as not being real. But that’s beside the point. My point is this: the audience was now brought to this point where we are sitting there wondering, “Okay, why did he even try?” And it’s at this moment that Elio’s father, Mr. Perlman, gives him this great speech that, in a way, schools all of us.
I won’t get into the details, you will have to watch the movie to figure that out, but the audience is given the best and the worst about falling in love. Mr. Perlman, might I say, is a king. It’s the kind of advice we all needed to hear post-tragedy. He saw right through Elio and, subsequently, right through all of us, the audience. Everything he said was one undeniable truth after the other, and he brought forth every reservation we’ve ever had. He then looked at them and said, spoiler alert, “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste.” Shortly after he adds, “Right now, there's sorrow, pain. Don't kill it and with it the joy you've felt” (Imdb.com).
Clearly, love isn’t something you can just avoid in the name of saving yourself a world of pain. This movie took the unconventional turn to explicitly tells us: go experience love with that important person in the most vulnerable sense possible. And when you are hurt, if you get hurt, don’t run from it.
Because the more you tear that out of yourself in an effort to save yourself, you are really just losing yourself. And then where would you be?
In the last scene, you are given your very last chance to see Timothée Chalamet’s amazing ability to put emotion into expression, and it is all visual. As you watch his face conform to what he tries to fight but then falls into, you feel a cleansing of sorts. And when his mother calls his name, and he turns around, you know that this isn’t his end. He didn’t lose any great part of himself. Rather he discovered something, and his ability to respond to his own name is a sign that he’s still alive. The good part of him survived what the audience thought he wouldn’t. The end of the movie is the beginning of Elio preserving what his father told him he shouldn’t lose.
He is still there and, even after the credits were rolling, so were we.
