Luca Guadagnino's adaptation of Call Me By Your Name begins with the first movement of John Adams' Hallelujah Junction, and in many ways it summarizes the film to come: it starts out playfully as two pianos conversing with each other, both patterned by the rhythm and syllabism of the word Hallelujah, the first syllable uttered like a breath indrawn. These are words of celebration, almost of relief, at finding each other, these musical voices finding holy meaning within the words they utter. And they are juxtaposed with images of ancient statues, chiseled and perfect yet relegated to the past: a picture-perfect distant memory, remembered yet again.
Love, meaning and memory form the center of the film, and the film as an adaptation of Andre Aciman's novel captures its essence without resorting to cheap theatrics.
Set in the balmy summer of 1983, in a Northern Italian town like any other, the film follows 17 year old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) as he grows attached to, and falls in love with, his father's research student Oliver (Armie Hammer). The film feels like a dreamy summer memory, its concerns removed from the rest of Italy, of Bettino Craxi and the Years of Lead. It's textured with piano music, from Bach to Ravel's Une barque sur l’océan to Ryuichi Sakamoto that evokes the calmness of the Italian countryside and the Meditteranean sea.
Call Me By Your Name finds meaning in meaning; meaning as in a definition, when the etymology of words are traced back to different roots - an apricot finds its meaning in the words precocious or ripeness, both loaded with images of youth and sexual awakening - and meaning as in intention, finding meaning behind action and non-action, in words and in silences. "Your silence is killing me," Elio writes, frustrated. Most of the film's most important scenes eschew dialogue, inviting the audience to read what is going on. The film finds its place in that stage where potential lovers grope in the darkness, trying to feel out each other's intentions. This stage is captured and visualized in a scene where the two of them dance to Psychedelic Furs' Love My Way, each one awkwardly approaching each other but seemingly not mindful of each other's presence.
And the love that blossoms from this kind of relationship is a pure kind of love, a love that turns into something more powerful than one's self. Yet it is the kind of love that is destined to be doomed, the kind of love that goes hand in hand with heartbreak. It is the kind of love that destroys you. The film knows that state between loving and knowing that one is loved in return, and it finds the pain in knowing the finite nature of this love.
The film's tone plays on memory, and our conception of it, and how film itself can serve as an idealized memory. In the original novel, the events of Call Me By Your Name are recalled by an older Elio. A similar treatment was planned with James Ivory's original script, but Guadagnino removes it to give the film a sense of immediacy while still retaining the wistful nature of the novel's point of view. The images and visuals presented by the film seem too perfect, as if it were an ideal dream. And many love stories seem this way in hindsight, playing out in our heads like a music video, but never going beyond that, remaining as memories. And when we see Elio during the final scene, and Sufjan Stevens' Visions of Gideon comes on, we are asked: is it a video? We come to question what has come before, pinching ourselves out of our stupor (perhaps, like Elio) and convincing ourselves that this wasn't a dream, that this love was real.
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