"But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste": How 'Call Me By Your Name' Became The Film I Never Wanted But Absolutely Needed

Have you ever listened to a record, read a book or watched a film that perfectly aligned with what was happening in your life at that precise moment, that it brought upon a such a powerful catharsis that it could never be written with such perfection in fiction?

Call Me By Your Name is that film for me.

I know, I’m about a year late on this caboose. When it was generating award buzz this time last year, it was the butt of a punchline that was slightly reminiscent of when Brokeback Mountain came out in 2005. I guess a couple of dudes romping around on a grassy knoll will make the public want to reach for that obvious penis-in-butt joke even though it’s been overplayed for decades and it’s just plain homophobic to make such a tacky and tactless crack at the expense of an entire community of people. In an era where everyone is trying to go viral by saying the obvious in a tongue-in-cheek tone, the laborious task of saying anything original has pretty much turned all of our brains in sludge. We live in hellworld. We’re living in an era of Trump.

There is also this waft of pretentiousness attached to a film about a grad student who stays in Northern Italy during a random summer in the 1980’s to study with a respected professor and ends up falling in love with his teenage son. The intellectual banter in the film where a seventeen year old boy trolls the object of his affection by refusing to play Bach in its original form as a way of flirting or the elaborate discussion about etymology and how the word “apricot” came to fruition is a conversation that would make any person in their right mind roll their eyes right out of their head can be…pretentious. For some reason though, I love that shit. Maybe it’s because there’s only a small, select group of people I can have those really dense, intellectually stupid conversations with that I cherish the rare moments where they occur in pop culture. I remember coming out of a theater last year with my good friend and passing by a huge poster for Call Me By Your Name. On the poster had the entire two page Rolling Stone review about how great the film was. My friend said he was somewhat interested in checking the film out before seeing that poster, but the poster solidified exactly what type of film it was and he simply said “fuck that”.

I didn’t really gain much of an interest in seeing Call Me By Your Name until I watched Lady Bird, another 2017 film that made it’s way around the awards circuit in 2018. Timothée Chalamet co-starred in that film as the object of Lady Bird’s interest—a Leftist punk who smoked , read A People’s History of The United States and wanted to talk about the Iraq War after having sex with Lady Bird. Chalamet’s performance as a pretentious, raging, Leftist asshole in the early 00’s reminded me of some of the guys I’ve met in DSA and it’s a brilliant performance. To be fair to myself though, I would have totally banged the shit out of a guy like that when I was seventeen years old and still would as a thirty year old woman.

It’s kind of amazing what a great actor Timothée Chalamet is, especially for such a young man. I’ve seen him in three films so far and each film feels like he’s lived for sixty years even though he’s only been alive for twenty-one. He has an old soul quality to him, which works beautifully in Call Me By Your Name. His character, Elio, is precocious (a word my co-worker has defined as another way of saying someone is a “little shit”), smart, intellectually able to hold himself in a conversation in regards to the arts yet maintains that naive vibe you get from seventeen year olds who think they know everything there is to know about the world but they actually know jack shit (This was me to a ‘T’ at that age).

But maybe my love for this film isn’t just for the performances and chemistry between Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

Maybe it is the predominantly Italo Disco soundtrack that lured me into an obsession with how wonderful this story really is?

Or the beautiful cinematography that captures the essence of Northern Italy, making the countryside glimmer on film?

It could be seeing two hot dudes roll around in nature without inhibition?

Or seeing Timothée Chalamet fuck a peach on screen?

Hearing Sufjan Stevens curated music?

The metaphors? The symbolism? Armie Hammer’s horrifically embarrassing dad dancing? The feeling of falling madly in love?

All of these are intricate in my adoration for such a generic storyline but the film completely took over me at the end, when Oliver, played by Armie Hammer, goes back to the States and Elio stays behind to covertly re-piece the shards of his broken heart. His parents take notice, especially Elio’s father played by the sometimes goofy, sometimes terrifying but always entertaining Michael Stuhlbarg.

This is a heart-to-heart father/son conversation that could have easily gone wrong with a cheesy, unforgiving and almost cringeworthy performance to watch on screen, but Stuhlbarg handles the scene with such grace and understanding it never gets anywhere near that kind of embarrassment. Sure, the conversation is essentially “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all”, but Elio’s father doesn’t sugarcoat it. He acknowledges having a broken heart sucks, that in time the pain will pass but the real stab to the heart? It’s okay to feel that pain. In fact, it’s good to feel that pain because it meant that Oliver was more than just a guy who visited their home over one summer to do boring grad work. The most poignant part of the scene comes from this particular 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 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!”

This is the part where I lost it because this is what I needed to hear. My fondness for Elio’s character wasn’t solely based on the charm of Chalamet’s performance—I knew exactly the pain Elio felt, a kinship that I’m sure many others have with the character. Stuhlbarg may have been in character addressing Chalamet as Elio, but it felt as if he was speaking to me beyond the screen. Pain is relative, pain is subjective but pain is universal. I needed the reminder that it’s okay to feel it, that it doesn’t need to shoved aside because it hurts too much or makes others feel uncomfortable, that it makes ME feel uncomfortable. Will I get over it? I don’t know. Right now I don’t think I will, which may be the pain talking. I’ve tried and failed at creating distractions for myself, I’ve done my best not talking about, I’ve exhausted myself to not think about it—anything to not feel it but it’s apparent it’s not working. My heart still feels heavy, as if cinder blocks of emotion are anchored to my valves, dragging me into heartbroken despair. One thing I’m giving myself in the New Year is the chance to do some soul searching, which means confronting the pain despite the fact that I have spent nearly a year running away from it. Maybe I’ll get rid of the heaviness clinging onto my chest, and I can try to rebuild my heart like Elio.

Had I watched this film this time last year, I’m sure I would have agreed that the film was good, maybe overrated but it wouldn’t have had the same impact watching it this year.

I’ll try to move on but deep down inside I’ll find myself wishing for this moment: