Call Me by Your Name

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I watched the movie first, although the movie compliments the book nicely. The book has some insights into Elio's thinking that the movie failed to convey so well. Elio's obsessive over-thinking and the strange dance shy people do all rang very true for me. the prose is beautiful and engaging and I was underlining frequently.

The movie truncates and wraps up and neatly cauterizes what the book draws out into an open wound. I was weeping by the final pages over these two beautiful idiots both for what they had and that they never had and by extension perhaps for what I have had and never had. Could they not be together because of timing? Fear? A random and ultimately cruel universe? I'm not sure and I'm not sure it matters what it was specifically, but I found it affecting nonetheless. I do think of Oliver as a traitor though. In that, Elio was quite correct.

I adore this book. Like all good art, I think it changed my life.

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to write or not to write.

I have vowed to write more, but have yet to be disciplined about what to write. I've had several story ideas I was very excited about, which have since faded to nothing because I forgot to write them down. Also, I am still pre-occupied with the general trainwreck that is my life. But here are some things I've been thinking about.

I, an poorly educated stem major, have been thinking about and reading some about philosophy, ethic, morals, purpose, etc. Christian apologists tend to claim christianity supplanted the pagan gods for a reason, and I am inclined to agree if not for all of the same reason. I think we are ripe for the next great moral framework to supplant christianity but it hasn't happened quite yet. It could be humanism, but it isn't yet. It could be some fusion of old and new ideas and gods but it hasn't happened yet. It is still trying to be born, stymied greatly by the dystopian horror also currently trying to breach the amniotic sac of bad ideas and break it's way into our world. Maybe the next phase only gets born as opposition to a greater evil though.  I do not have the details or evidence to argue these assertions just yet.

I am still at war with my addictions. I cannot yet break from from bad habits of technology or diet or lack of exercise into habits that I am sure would make me feel much better. Getting closer every day, but no watershed moment just yet.  Good art keeps trying to save my life though. Call Me by Your Name, however flawed, nudged something lose and I am still turning it over. It's not quite depression, it's more a lack of purpose and connection, as I believe I've mentioned before. Hoping to get it before it gets me.

The other cat is starting to show the same signs of kidney failure as the last. She and I do not have the same connection as I did with Zapp, but I am not looking forward to another round of "hey, your cat is dying." I want to write a book on cats and religion and history. A history of religion and cats. I'm not even quite sure that's the book idea I had. God, I need to write these things down.

My face is almost not completely fucked, although I still need to actually meet a dermatologist to confirm. Hooray?

Call me by your name

I finally got around to watching Call Me By Your Name this week and I'm still thinking about it days later.

I don't think it's the most epic romance I've ever seen, but it was sweet and lovely and life affirming and such a stark contrast to the life I've been living.

Let's set aside the gay stuff for a second, even though it's more or less central to the whole experience. Just lingering by proxy in such an idyllic setting was ... shocking? Invigorating? I traditionally go to movies to escape to outer space but who knew what I really needed was lingering shots of riding bikes through the Italian countryside? That depiction of life, albeit as inherited wealth, complete with servants, was so refreshing. Even in a much more modest home, would I enjoy swimming every day, riding bikes into town and community events like dancing and volleyball? Yes, yes I would.

Are some of these community things absent from my life because times have changed or just because I have changed into someone who tries very little to improve his life? I don't know, but my relation to the setting of this film is simple longing. Well, longing is a central theme of the film and my relationship to it in general, but specifically the setting. Goddamn gorgeous.

Continuing to put the gay stuff aside temporarily, I also felt a strong sense of desire for Elio's family life. When I was young I dated my own Marzia, the daughter of a professor with a rich family life. their house was a clutter of musty books and their conversations were about music and writers that largely went over my ADD comic-book loving head, but I adored them all the same. Talking about philosophers and composers and the finer points of the humanities is extremely soothing to me, as it turns out, and I appreciate having a friendly place to do that. Elio's family life reminds me much of that time I spent with her and her family.

We even had a similar arc to Elio and Marzia, albeit years later. She admitted she broke up with me because she felt there was always a part of me I couldn't give to her and when I started dating men it clicked. She remains one of my truest friends and still the only ex I have a good and strong connection with. She' is also the sole reminder of what a delight the humanities loving lifestyle can be whenever I visit her and her own giant collection of books and music.

So I long for that scholastic home life, but I also greatly envied Elio a family that only cared that he was happy and supported him no matter who he happened to love. I kept waiting for it to go dark, for his father to become irate, but it never happened. I'm not sure Elio understands how good he has it. But I can't be the only queer watching this with an ache in their heart about how their own family experience contrasts with the almost high fantasy portrayal here. I'm not saying it's unrealistic, just so pure and life affirming that it almost doesn't feel like real life. Real life, historically, being less affirming of the humanity of those experiencing it.

I mean, this film is a pure gay coming of age fantasy in many ways. An ideal setting, an ideal family, an ideal lover, an understanding ex-girlfriend, etc. that's kind of what makes it beautiful. A pure and good expression of the world it is possible to create.

I say it's not an epic romance because while I found the lead actors both handsome and good at their craft, the chemistry didn't seem quite believable to me. As a man who has kissed men I didn't quite buy their sexual chemistry. Of course, epic romance and smoking sex scenes is not really the intent here anyway. It was much more about Elio's awakening and Oliver's liberation at being allowed to be exactly who he was without pretense for a few sweet moments.

Elio's adolescent weirdness rang extremely true for me and Timothee Chalomet did such great work with it. The sense of longing he had for Oliver was very real to me. And rang very true of how weird I was as an adolescent and how I was when I first started to try and date men, albeit at a more advanced age.

Oliver's sense of liberation when he finally gets to be with Elio struck a chord as well. It's left fairly ambiguous whether the both of them are gay or just bisexual but this is clearly a part of them they don't get to express openly in 1983. The sense of joy at being able to let their guard down with each other is very real. Was the tragedy that their joy was to be short-lived solely due to circumstance or from the assumption that this is something they would not be allowed to have long term? Part of the tragedy is we just don't know. Does Oliver get engaged to a woman because he is truly bisexual or because he gives up on ever having what his heart truly desires? Much like Elio's father did, as he reveals in a moving final speech.

So as much as the film is about longing it is also about loss. About letting loss numb you to the point you stop believing you can be who you truly want to be and be with who you truly want to be with. It happened to Elio's father. It may have happened to Oliver. Only Elio, in a moving and lingering final shot on his face as he stares into the fire and lets himself feel what he feels, refuses to cut part of himself away to spare himself pain.

This movie is begging us not to surrender our deepest selves in the face of pain or loss or a world actively hostile to who we truly are. And so I am still thinking about it several days later.

Inifity War = a numb ass at the theater

I don't know if I need to spill ink over Infinity war. It was what it was. I liked it as a spectacle. It is basically a comic book cross-over in movie form with all the good things and bad things that brings.  All your favorite heroes meet each other!  Hooray!

But aside from spectacle, it relies heavily on the character work from all the pervious films to drive this one, because there's no time to develop it here.  You really, really have to care about a character coming in to the film to even start to care what happens to them here. A lot of amazing things happen that land with no weight because you know the ending will absolutely be reversed, and, more importantly, there's not enough time to establish any sense of stakes and therefore, inevitably, loss with any of the characters. I think it's supposed to be Tony carrying the emotional weight here, but he's not really given any more time than the others to develop it.

The only death that seemed sad was spider-man's, but that's largely because they pulled the "I don't want to go," line which was powerful the first time I saw a character say it, but seems cheaper and cheaper as a trope the more time goes on. Even the post-credits scene is less an emotional after-punch than an ad for the next movie. Not that that's particularly unusual, but it doesn't help things land any harder.

I don't know, it didn't crush my soul and I liked it okay. I can 100% see why someone would be tired of these things at this point though.

Also, my ass really was numb at the end.