Perhaps this essay would be better preceded by my series of thoughts on love, narcissism, pain and prostitution, specifically in the gay community.  It’s a good idea for another blog post but this article is what is really on my mind.  If you have not seen “Call Me By Your Name”, maybe don’t see it just yet.  Spend a few nights reading the 2007 book.  Then spend a day or two recovering.  Then go see the movie.  Then recover again.  Then compare the book and the movie.  You will reward yourself with the gift of true artistic comparison, as both the book and the movie stand on their own.  You will also cry a lot.  The movie, filmed in the last year and recently released, has been in pre-production for many years.  It is the result of numerous script rewrites and changes of production crew/leadership. 

The movie feels light whereas the book is incredibly descriptive and feels heavy.  The movie therefore leaves out a lot of details and the viewer is left piecing some of the puzzle together based on the actors facial expressions and eye movements.  As someone who read the book, I filled in the blanks with the excerpts from the book, as I knew from reading about the production of this film over the past year, the movie is meant to represent the book in a visual format.  It is not meant to be a completely different story.  It is meant to express the essence of the novel.  Not everyone liked this approach.  As one friend put it, “I hated the book, you go through 80 pages where nothing happens and you just read about what’s going on in Elio’s head.”  I think that is why I loved the book.  The thoughts resonated with me.  It is what I went through when I first felt love.  It is also a lot of what I still feel when I experience love.

The plot is a love story of two men who seem to be discovering themselves as they discover each other.  One is about 10 years older than the other.  The younger, Elio, 17 in the book, is played by a 20 year old actor Timothee Chalamet.  Oliver, the older 26 year old, is played by 30 year old Armie Hammer, of The Social Network fame in which he played the unintentionally hilarious and incredibly handsome Winklevii Twins.

Spoiler Alert: needless to say, the love does not last more than a month or so.  Maybe 6 weeks?  The relationship does not slow down or have a downfall.  It just ghosts.  The relationship completely disappears and Elio is left crushed.  Everything he thought he was starting to understand is suddenly gone and he realizes he understands nothing.  His father, in a soliloquy at the end of the film reminds him that it is better to have experienced love and lost than to have never experienced love at all.  Love hurts and the pain is part of living and he should not give up hope on love.  Every review of this movie mentions this part of the film and the performance of the actor who played the father, Michael Stuhlbarg.

On a short side note, I’d like to mention the actress who plays the mother, Amira Casar.  I thought she portrayed a realistic, loving relationship with her super nerdy husband.  Her sultry nature, joy of life and beautiful looks left me without question how she raised a musical prodigy, multilingual and possibly gay son, Elio.  She is not mentioned in a single review and I do not know why.  I couldn’t keenly eyes off of her.

I found out about the article suggesting that this movie was a fantasy from a Facebook post that a respected friend had posted.  He wrote that he, too, thought that considering the book was Elio’s retelling of this romance having taken place 30 years ago, there is no way that this love could have been as Elio remembered it.  What my friend did not know is that the director, Luca Guadagnino, and writer, James Ivory, specifically did not want the movie to be a told from first-person perspective with voiceover narration.  The film is portrayed as events happening in real time and you, the viewer, get to witness this love unfold.

What ensued was a litany of Facebook commenters writing back that they agreed and thought that the love portrayed in the film was not real nor realistic.  It must have been a fantasy!  For example, in the scene where Oliver and Elio are by the water fountain in the town piazza, Elio shares with Oliver that he can only confide some things in him, because he wants to confide things in him.  It was Elio’s intellectual way of telling Oliver that he loved him.  Oliver got the hint alright.  My Facebook friends (further known as my friends) claim that because this scene does not make sense to them and because there is an artistic element to this scene where the actors seem to be dancing around the cameras, this is most likely a dream sequence. 

I am not kidding.  My friends thought the movie was based on a character’s dream.  This is what they thought even though there is absolutely no indication from the writer, director, book author, filmography or special effects that any moment of this story is meant to represent a fantasy.  My friends thought that because the book’s narrative is from Elio’s memories 30 years ago, there’s no possible way that Elio could remember everything as it was and even as he was experiencing it, he most likely only saw the things he wanted to, so the there is no realism in this story and it’s a dream.

These comments made me quite upset.  I took it all so personally.  I felt like my friends were telling me that I cannot have love.  In reality, my friends probably have not experienced anything like the emotions in the movie, at least that’s what they said on Facebook.   Maybe they got close to it and were hurt?  Maybe they’ve totally shut off to the idea of being loved?  They have given up?  I’ll never know and it is not my business.  What I can say is that they were so steadfast and confident in their opinion that the story is a fantasy, that they felt just as confident to redefine what the movie means for others.  They meant to share an opinion about the film but actually dismissed the premise, which is not an opinion nor an argument.  An outright dismissal is denial and not going to be welcoming to other opinions or an intellectual discussion. I present you with the series of denials:

The first denial is the existence or the possibility of love.  For example, if I thought the movie was unrealistic, I would probably just say that I thought the movie was just that.  “I didn’t like it, it was unrealistic.”  However, to further elaborate that love like what is expressed in the movie could never happened and for that reason, the movie is a fantasy, my friends are saying that love like this cannot exist. 

The second denial is the retelling and how it could not have possibly been an accurate collection of memories.  This line of thinking does not resonate with me because I have felt this love.  I have felt this love and I have remembered it.  I have remembered it in great detail.  I don’t think I remembered it “they way I wanted to” or that I only saw the things I wanted to see.  I remember the manipulation, hurt and pain, devilish looks, competition, desire to fuck and desire to kill.  It was torture.  I did not get the guy at the end.  This ending is a familiar story with regards to my dating history.  We can finally get to my thesis.  The author of the Daily Beast article writes: “After all, if the moment truly happened the way Elio remembers it, wouldn’t Oliver still be with him?”

No.  Of course not.  Who the hell have you been dating?

(I think this article is nuts.)  Almost every guy I know in New York has problems dating.  The guys ghost or the relationship builds up and someone freaks out.  The relationships last 1-3 months, max.  I’m not alone here.  They all end with someone cutting it off, even if the love was strong in the beginning.  For that reason, no, Oliver wouldn’t necessarily still be with Elio just because they had an incredible amount of love for each other.  That is not how love works.  You don’t just feel super strongly and then you stay with the same person forever.  (Really?  Love is that simple?  You just have to feel stuff and your relationship lasts?  And this gay author obviously knows that.)  In New York City, where the polyamorous/open relationship forces single guys to put themselves in emotionally vulnerable positions regularly or run the risk of being ostracized, we are all familiar with the complexity of love and how it makes us treat others; whether it is our primary partner or our other sex partners.  So why did he suddenly change the rules and set the expectation that Elio and Oliver have to be together forever simple because the love is real?

This is the third and final denial. The author and my friends do not want this love to be real for anyone.  They are even denying themselves (and others) the desire. 

I’m just very surprised by this reaction.  The phrase “love is a two-way street” is meant to talk about functional loving relationships.  Was Elio and Oliver’s loving relationship functional at all?  Sneaking into each others bedrooms while Elio’s parents were asleep downstairs?  No, this was not a two-way street.  The love was unofficial and secretive.  It was headed in a one-way direction to the devil!  No, no, I’m kidding.  It was headed in a one-way direction to nowhere, really.  The element of lust perpetuated the relationship, added incredible excitement and probably also scared the hell out of Oliver.  His was fucking his boss’s son.  Now I know what you are thinking, dear reader.  “Jon, you are confusing lust and love.”  Thanks for the reminder but no, I am not.  Love can be incredibly lustful.   Crushing on a hot boy or wanting his bulge is lustful.  Caring about someone, dreaming about him, wanting to be with him and to paraphrase the book: not being sure if you want to be with him, actually be him or kill him; that is love.

Finally, I believe Elio and Oliver loved each other.  I believe Oliver left Elio or simply did not return to Elio’s life for absolutely no reason at all.  It is one of those things we will never know or understand, just like we will never understand why our own loving relationships around the world do not always last.  This is part of my life too.