(This essay was originally written in 2017.)
By inviting us to watch, movies involve us in the radical act of discerning inner lives that are not our own. They show us the interactions between inner lives — the emotional stances that people take toward one another, often without knowing it. The best movies do this with an open heart. They help us understand that these stances exist between all of us, all sentient beings, merely as a result of our inability to be sentient together, in exactly the same way.
In my opinion, movies are uniquely capable of doing this. They’re the closest we have to the reenactment of dreams, of memory. And in their unfolding, twenty four frames per second, one second after the next, they mimic our own experience of experiencing — each of us the sole audience member at the lifelong screening of our lives.
When we watch movies, we generally don’t think about all of that. We either enjoy a film or we don’t. We’re moved or we’re not. But after the most indelible, most satisfying of moviegoing experiences, I think we can sense the miraculousness of what movies are able to achieve through the mysteries of their craft. We can sense the power inherent in their capacity to show us a human face — many walls tall, larger than we ever ordinarily look at human faces — in a way that suggests what could be going on just beyond its skin and bone… and then show us another human face looking back at the first, in a way that communicates what is beyond the reach of words.
Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name is a great example of this power, of everything I’ve been writing about. It drips of affection for its characters and has deep compassion about the ways in which they relate to one another.
Amplifying its power is Timothée Chalamet’s phenomenal performance as Elio, whose point of view predominates the film. He looks up at Oliver in the reverent, desirous way that we look up at Greco-Roman statues, and clings to him like a brazen puppy. Chalamet is transparent, instinctual, and provocative, all without ever appearing to act. He simply is Elio. A precocious, curious boy who, for all his classical sophistication, behaves with a charming innocence and sincerity when confronted with the pangs of first love and desire.
Over the course of the film, we watch him reconcile his own exploding inner life with his feelings about Oliver, just as we watch Oliver adapt under Elio’s shifting gaze — a “usurper” or “traitor” in one moment, an object of overwhelming desire in the next. Ultimately, we witness the evolution of a profound mutuality between these two characters.
Guadagnino conveys this mutuality in myriad ways. The push and pull of early infatuation. The sensory overload of a harmless but intentional touch. After a series of memorable bike rides, a shot of bike handles intertwined. The great Piave memorial scene, in which Une barque sur l’océan creeps into the soundtrack when Elio and Oliver are apart and recedes when they are together, in which the camera follows Elio’s gaze upward at the battle monument, at the Italian flag behind it, at the cross on top of a nearby church. In a scene that’s all about the negotiation of emotional and physical distance, here are symbols of war, country, and religion — big, distancing forces in a world full of small people struggling even to be close to those who are right in front of them.
Visually, the idea of love as a kind of profound mutuality culminates in a fantastic upside-down shot of Elio and Oliver staring at each other when the latter whispers the film’s title — a literal expression of mutuality — out loud: “Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine.” It’s no coincidence that, if the shot were right-side-up, Elio’s face would be where Oliver’s is, and vice-versa.
Watching the film, I felt the collective importance of these details. I also felt the weight of time, a force which grows as Elio and Oliver grow closer together (ironically, as they grow closer to being apart).
The Perlman villa, even from opening shots of Elio moving through wooden doors and antique furnishings, feels visited by time. Life moves slowly from hour to hour, from one room to the next, from outside on the ground floor to the balconies above. However, day by day, time appears to slip by much more quickly. One morning’s breakfast turns into the next’s. A night spent out dancing turns into another night entertaining house guests in the living room. It’s just another one of those summers, the film seems to say. All you can do is wait for it to end, then wait for it to come back again, a sentiment that Oliver and Elio both express early on.
They are both vigilant about time in this movie, about consequential plans taking place at this time or that. But their vigilance doesn’t prepare them for time’s essential tragedy: that it passes and can’t be recovered.
This is what grounds the astonishing final shot of the movie: Elio in front of the fire, thinking about his relationship with Oliver, putting into practice the wisdom imparted to him by his father just a few scenes before. We can actually see that wisdom being recalled in Chalamet’s head as Sufjan Stevens sings “I have loved you for the last time…” over the image.
We can see Elio assimilating his immediate pain and heartbreak with memories of transcendent love. It’s an indelible moment from an indelible performance, from one of the most powerful moviegoing experiences I can recall.