Name: Revisiting Call Me By Your Name.
Uploaded: 2024-07-16T00:35:17.000Z
Duration: 14 min 38 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I gotta go to town in a little bit and pick some things up.

Oh, I can go. I'm not doing anything today.

Luca Guadagnino's coming-of-age romance Call Me By Your Name operates invisibly.

The film is visually striking, for sure, but in every aspect, it really excels in its sensuality and subtlety.

Look at how people walk downstairs in Call Me By Your Name.

Why are we now shown him dusting off his bike?

Why does his hand linger so painfully on this rail?

On page 4 of the Call Me By Your Name screenplay, the film's screenwriter James Ivory gives the simple direction Oliver is coming down the stairs.

On page 10, he cuts straight from should we take Anchisa's bikes to Elio and Oliver are riding bicycles.

But when director Luca Guadagnino gets on set, he puts into practice a lesson drilled into him by the legendary Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci.

You have to throw the script when you start the movie.

Part of a film director's job on set is to direct performances and determine the blocking of the scene, the movement of actors within the space.

So every chance he gets, Luca Guadagnino emphasises the tactile nature of this world.

In this scene, Guadagnino directs Armie Hammer to curiously feel out the texture of the wall and all of a sudden this house is given an extra tactile dimension.

Let's now re-edit the bike scene to show how Ivory wrote it in the screenplay.

It's not much, but now whenever you see them riding, you can feel your own hands on the handlebars and really place yourself on that bike.

Directed as it is, the world becomes not just a beautiful thing to see with your eyes, but a place you can touch, feel and linger upon.

Let's jump forward a little to page 19 in the screenplay and watch the scene at the same time.

Anchisa approaches Elio, carrying a large fish wrapped up in a t-shirt which he uncovers for Elio.

In this script, Anchisa takes the fish straight to the kitchen.

But remember, as soon as Guadagnino gets on set, he throws this script into the fiery pits of hell.

So he decides to create a few more actions which add to Elio's character and emphasise yet another important sense.

Notice particularly how it makes the house a character of its own.

Listen to the knock on this door and you can feel its weight.

And listen to how this book cuts it like a knife echoing throughout the house.

Listen to this bell, how loud and crisp it is.

And now listen to that sound barely reaching Elio's room.

With just this difference in sound, you can feel the size and emptiness of the house.

Guadagnino also places a heavy emphasis on taste.

There is a lot of eating in this movie and most of it is not sexual but simply epicurean in nature for the simple purpose of sensual enjoyment.

You need look no further than this simple question from T.S. Eliot's classic poem

But in Call Me By Your Name, Guadagnino combines the natural taste of the fruit with the taste of a slightly more sexual substance.

The question of daring thus becomes the question of daring to eat a peach.

The question of daring thus becomes sexual in nature.

But it's not something you just think about or intellectualise.

It's something you can disgustingly almost taste on the screen.

Elio is really enjoying himself in there.

But notice that this theme of dirty used clothing runs throughout the film.

This is what Guadagnino lets us smell after they have sex.

And immediately after we're treated to this.

I don't know that much about lakes but listen to the mosquitoes.

But let's return to the lyrics of Sufjan Stevens which I used to open this video.

This quote talks about a paradoxical clarity that comes through lack of vision.

By focusing on the invisible one can truthfully feel an experience rather than seeing and intellectualising it.

And I think this philosophy is also true for the film's story.

It took Call Me By Your Name almost 10 years to find funding and get made because there was no obvious antagonist or even conflict.

In fact the world of this film is a utopia.

Elio lives in the most beautiful house in the most picturesque town.

He spends his time swimming in lakes and pools, writing and transcribing music.

At night they go out dancing and there are girls all over him.

And in any other gay romance it would be so easy to create conflict within the story by bringing in obvious homophobia.

But Call Me By Your Name steers clear of this cliché.

In fact it pushes it in the opposite direction.

Gay couples are shown to be friends in this world and Mr Perlman explicitly denounces homophobia.

You're too old not to accept people for who they are.

You call them Sonny and Cher behind their backs?

This is an idealistic scenario for kids growing up in the 2020s, let alone the 1980s.

You could not wish for a better environment to fall in love with someone.

But then we get this scene which finally brings to light the film's conflicts which until this point have been invisible.

I may have come close but I never had what you two have.

Something always held me back or stood in the way.

Just remember our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once.

And before you know it your heart's worn out.

And as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it.

Luca Guadagnino has said that the antagonist of this film is time.

In fact, Mr Perlman's monologue echoes the words of Elio himself just before he leaves with Oliver.

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Revisiting Call Me By Your Name.

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