CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
RELEASED : 2017
DIRECTOR :  LUCA GUADAGNINO

                                          "Is it better to speak or die?"

“Call Me by Your Name,” begins in the summer of 1983, in a place so enchanted, that it belongs in a fairy tale. The location, the opening credits tell us, is “Somewhere in Northern Italy.” Such vagueness is deliberate: the point of a paradise is that it could exist anywhere but that, once you reach the place, you never forget it. Thus it is that a young American named Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives, dopey with jet lag, at the house of his Professor Mr Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his wife (Amira Casar). “We’ll have to put up with him for six long weeks,” Annella says, with a sigh. Well, not long enough, as it turns out. One can pack a whole lifetime into these six weeks.

The first words of the film are “The Usurper” , uttered by the Perlmans’  son, Elio (Timothée Chalamet), who is seventeen, a music prodigy and a voracious reader. Oliver stays at Elio's room and Elio shifts to the adjoining room, sharing a bathroom. Soon this sharing changes to handshakes and bike rides and cigarettes and kisses, concluding in the most profound exchange of all, proclaimed in the title of the movie.

"Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine"

One can regard Oliver as the epitome of power with his handsome charms. And yet, as he and Elio lounge on sun-warmed grass, it’s Oliver who seems unmanned, and it’s Elio who lays a purposeful hand directly on Oliver’s crotch. Now one, now the other appears the more carnally confident of the two.

Elio and Oliver both seem to have physical relations with women, but then, they are quite confident about themselves in the later half of the film. Desire is served as a dish throughout the film, and each character is invited to have some, according to their own taste.

And then, one day, Oliver has to leave. As for their parting, it is wordless. They look at one another and just nod, as if to say, 'Yes, that is right. That is how it is meant to be'. 

Elio is lucky to have supporting parents who know about Oliver and his relation. When Elio is back home, his father sits with him on a couch, smokes, and talks of what has occurred. We expect some disdain, instead of which we hear a confession. “I envy you,” he tells Elio, adding, 

"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 to feel anything - what a waste"

 He once came near, he admits, to having what Elio and Oliver had, but something stood in the way, and he advises his child to seize the day, including the pain that the day brings, while he is still young: 

“Our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Before you know it, your heart is worn out.”

The father adds, as Elio seems to understand,

"Fear not. It will come. At least i hope it does. And when you least expect it. Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot"

We soon shift to the time of Hanukkah. Elio seems to be happy, but then one day, after a long time, Oliver calls. Elio half expects the news, which breaks his as well as the audience's heart. Oliver is engaged. His father isn't as supportive like Elio's and he doesn't have the courage to confront him. And Elio seems to understand and ready for a compromise. The ending is one of my favorite since it doesn't involve any words. Only Chalamet in front of the fire with his expressions, his feelings and his tears. One realizes what he feels, yet, one doesn't completely unless he can get into his shoes. 

The film is undoubtedly a masterpiece, based on the novel of the same name by André Aciman. The film is about lust and first love, selflessness and desire, body and soul, heartbreak and friendship. One surely has moist eyes by the end of the film trying to imagine "his" version of Elio's fate. A story about mingling of two lost souls, who have found each other but have to separate due to the society, is what this movie beautifully provides us.