Stars: Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay*, Actor-Timothee Chalamet, Original Song-"Mystery of Love")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Elio (Chalamet), a Jewish-American young man of about 17 (did they actually say his age in the film, or is this just plucked from the novel?), who is annoyed with his father's (Stuhlbarg) research assistant, a grad student named Oliver (Hammer) who is working on an archeological dig. The film starts with the talented Elio largely disliking the casual, relaxed Oliver, and then slowly realizing that his feelings of disgust are masking a deep attraction that they both feel for each other. The movie wanders through this relationship, frequently hitting anticipated pitstops but never entirely giving into cliches the way one would assume such a film about self-discovery, forbidden sexuality, and love would unfold.
It's hard to know where to begin with the film, but I'll perhaps confess first that I was crying intermittently during the final twenty minutes (less than I had expected considering how moving it was) and then when I turned the engine on in my car in the parking garage, I felt a wave of raw emotion sweep me over and began sobbing uncontrollably. Perhaps this is because Call Me By Your Name derives its masterpiece status from not being a movie with easy answers or simple questions. The writing is momentous, with crisp, fresh dialogue, and gives you great ideas about how quickly life moves and how we don't always recognize what matters when it happens. Michael Stuhlbarg gets an astounding monologue toward the end of the film where he tries to impress upon his son not that he will have other lovers, but more so how rare what he just experienced is, and how it gets harder to love so freely and with such abandon as we get older, so appreciate it and don't bury or cheapen the emotions he's feeling. The line "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." I genuinely can't remember the last time a movie I saw had such a profound pearl of wisdom buried within it.
But Call Me By Your Name is filled with jewels. It's occasionally funny (though attention straight people-if you're the only person who is laughing, or clearly only straight people are laughing about the behaviors of gay characters, you're being homophobic-there was a woman who kept nervously laughing in the film during scenes that were a lot more serious than she assumed them to be, and it was bordering on a hate crime by the end of the picture), and I liked the beats of giving the characters more happiness than we're conditioned to assume in a gay-themed romance. The movie's score is fantastic, littered with interpretations of classic composers, and enriched with several songs by Sufjan Stevens, who has crafted arguably the most unique-to-its-picture original soundtrack I can remember for a non-musical since The Graduate (the similarities with Mike Nichols' classic abound, and other than maybe Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, the 1967 picture is Call Me By Your Name's most obvious spiritual sibling). And James Ivory's traditional class and stiff-then-relinquished view on love in movies is a natural fit for this story (and whomever was the person who nixed the narration idea that was apparently central to the novel deserves an Oscar by themselves-the genuine question that hangs over whether or not Elio or Oliver stay together drives the picture, with you assuming they don't but praying they do).
The film's performances, though, seem to be gaining the most attention, and with good reason. Hammer has never shown this sort of ability before, and plays a man enjoying perhaps his only dalliance with a sexuality he's been taught to repress (he becomes engaged to a woman at the end of the picture, and shares that his father would disown him if he were to continue dating men) with great relish. There are scenes of intimacy between the two that show Oliver starved for affection, a part of himself he shut off finally getting a day-in-the-sun. Stuhlbarg has a smaller role than I assumed based on reviews, but is so devastating in his final monologue that it's easy to see why he's gained his plaudits-honestly, there's so much heartbreak and tenderness in that scene, it's impossible not to see more in every previous interaction his professor has with side characters, or really to see more in how you yourself see the world. But most impressive of all is Chalamet, largely unknown before this year, who gives a master class in acting. His work is so lived-in, it's as if he was being followed around an Italian villa and discovering his own world as he's going. The final credits scenes, where he weeps into the fireplace, is sublime and the sort of moment actors dream about, but really there's nothing false in this performance, it's so self-assured. Considering how tricky it could have been (it's easy to see a different actor making him too angry or too horny or too sad), Chalamet's Elio is a miracle. I've been shocked all season that a 23-year-old man could gain love in the Best Actor field, but after watching the movie, it's a mystery no longer. This is a performance too good to be ignored.
I may be gilding the lily here, but I'm coming back to this review having tinkered with it four times and not being able to quite get across how emotional and stunning the film was for me personally. I get this way with select movies where I can't put it down, like when you read a book and then instantly have to reread it because you don't want the high of a great story to end quite yet (I did this at least twice with On Chesil Beach, and read it every April because its final moments are so powerful to me). Before Sunset, The Conformist, Lost in Translation, Nashville, Titanic-movies that I just want to keep recapturing that bliss of seeing something so spellbinding onscreen, trying to understand why it filled me so fully. I literally cried again this morning when I started playing Sufjan Stevens' "Mystery of Love" in my car. Really great film can affect you in ways you didn't expect, and Guadagnino's picture is the sort that will stay with me for weeks after, the sort of movie you watch and decide to live your life differently. I'm trying really hard not to be hyperbolic here, mostly because I hate it when people are hyperbolic about movies (perhaps because the movies they wax on about feel pretty run-of-the-mill for someone who has seen over 50 calendar-release films in 2017 alone this year, not to mention dozens of others that I see in my living room), but I can't help it. I keep thinking back to Chalamet's face and the briefness of Elio and Oliver's encounter. Call Me by Your Name is the closest I have come to love-at-first-site at the theaters in a long time. I'm a bit scared to see it again because how can it be so good upon revisit, but based on my experience my gut rarely gives in like this unless the love is going to be permanent. Anyway, I'm going to end it there, just flummoxed how the movie I have spent the past year hoping to see with sky-high expectations still said "yeah, John, we're going to be better than that." And with that indulgent final paragraph, I am going to go listen to "Visions of Gideon" and daydream about Italy some more.
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