Overlooked Aspects
Amid the amount of criticism surrounding Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, one important aspect seems to have been overlooked. A more nuanced interpretation is necessary even though the film is largely viewed through the prism of the most obvious common clichés.
At first glance, Call Me by Your Name seems like a coming-of-age story. Venomously, the story follows the development of the relationship between Elio age 17, and Oliver age 24, a visiting scholar employed by Elio’s father. According to the first interpretation, the film is a painstaking examination of Elio’s maturity, his initial rejection, his subsequent acceptance, and his final love for Oliver.
Additionally, Call Me by Your Name has been praised by critics as a bold reversal of the coming-of-age genre. Oliver’s imminent return to the United States marks the end of their love story. The film takes on a traditional antagonist whose anxiety is approaching a deadline. The point of view emphasizes the film’s avant-garde view of the genre and opts for more complex suspense rather than a definitive antagonist.
Socioeconomic Critique
However, Call Me by Your Name seems a little insensitive compared to other coming-of-age stories of 2017 like The Florida Project and Lady Bird; both films feature female characters struggling against social limitations imposed by gender and class. One way to read this unintentional reflection on the unequal distribution of privilege across socioeconomic lines is to look at its concentration on Elio and Oliver’s wealthy neighborhood.
Certainly, it is a valid view adding to the complete understanding of Call Me by Your Name. However, it would be inappropriate to elevate any interpretation above others as the film’s central theme. Instead, it is better to see it from the opposing viewpoints coexisting in the film and create a colored mosaic highlighting a more gradual thesis.
The film is a bold and self-aware investigation of cinema itself; it is woven into the exposition rich in metaphorical and metonymic imagery. Everything in compliance with general norms is executed very well. The film explores the formal techniques used by films to create and control desire while criticizing the role of film historically in propagating fantasy.
The large number of images in the film representing bourgeois prosperity is no coincidence. In several interviews, Guadagnino himself stated how the decision plans to place criticism of the film within the framework of Western popular illusions. If Call Me by Your Name is interpreted as a coming-of-age story, then it traces Elio’s romantic development while also depicting his disappointment with the unfulfilled promises of imagination and film.
There is a well-established notion of how the cinematic apparatus has an innate tendency to capture and transform the aspirations of the audience throughout the history of the medium. Many theoretical frameworks (including aesthetics, semiotics, psychology, and ideology) have been used to interpret the important power of the cinema. For example, Patricia MacCormack explores the idea of “cine-sexuality”; it is a pure and soulful aesthetic pleasure derived from an encounter with a film. On the other hand, Grahame Weinbren admits that the logic of reassuring and ordering the world is used in traditional cinematic storytelling. Indeed, the results of the disciplinary approach are not entirely clear. However, its capacity to captivate audiences has long been recognized and researched.
Call Me by Your Name is undoubtedly a demonstration of cinema’s potential to produce a spectrum of conflicting emotions or “affective ambivalence.” The film’s stunning scenery, well-chosen soundtrack, and deeply moving performances work together to manipulate the audience’s emotional state purposefully and humorously without providing any explanation for the intended impact. However, there is a sense of particular concern with the tendency of cinema to obscure the falsity of the film itself and deliberately distort the audience’s understanding of reality.
Simultaneously, film’s unique capacity to depict and control our view of reality is a key component of cinema typically taken for granted by audiences of a certain age. The ability to do so has made the image controversial. Film theorist Gilles Deleuze drew attention to a gap between cinema and artistic disciplines such as painting and sculpture. On the other hand, cinema “makes the world itself something unreal,” according to Deleuze, whereas cinematographers attempt to induce a sense of unreality through their manipulation of the environment. In the film, the world turns into its image, and an image turns into a world.” Although Deleuze does not explain in detail the idea, his description of a surprising reversal occurs in cinema where the “real world” is reduced to nothing more than raw material for images and artifice hints at the dark side of the medium’s appeal. The fakeness produced and enthralled by cinema is so compelling that it seems to seep out of the screen and reshape and influence the way we see the “real” world.
The Power of Images
Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the “hyperreal” characterizes the state of modern culture as characterized by an epistemic gap in line with it. The line separating ideological fantasy from practical reality, namely between fact and fiction, is becoming increasingly blurred in a media-saturated culture. Although broad and vague, the theoretical framework is consistent with a long history of media criticism aimed at uncovering the material and ideological power wielded by those producing cultural products, particularly filmmakers.
Famously, Marshall McLuhan described cinema as “a huge part of the giant industry” emphasizing its function as a powerful force behind consumerist culture. When it comes to the economic and industrial landscape of mass culture, German critical theorist Theodor Adorno identified moviegoers seeing the outside world as an extension of the film they had just watched as a prime example of the influence of the mass media system since the early 1940s. Adorno argued that “the more densely and completely the cinematic technique duplicates empirical objects, the more easily it creates the illusion that the external world is a seamless extension of the world revealed in the cinema.” The statement recognizes the important role of cinema in shaping ideology, especially in totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany. Adorno believes in how delusion and inevitability are produced by the capitalist media system. The sterile and hyper-consumerist world seeps into everyday life increasingly entangling the viewer in the consumerist system and sustaining the ideological fiction of capitalist society.
However, Call Me by Your Name shows how contrary to Adorno’s claims films rarely find satisfaction in the simple replication of ordinary things recorded empirically. Rather, his essence forced him to go beyond the ordinary, honed his expressive range, and strengthened his ability to evoke powerful feelings. Throughout the history of photography and cinema, filmmakers have carefully developed a broad vocabulary of formal and technological rhetoric with the express purpose of achieving the goal. They create painstakingly designed visual, aural, and even lexical landscapes imbued with compelling allure and raw emotional resonance with surgical precision.
Adorno suggests that the viewer be given a different point of view because of the difference between the world depicted on the screen and the reality it is intended to reflect. It allows individuals to view their daily lives as always characterized by feelings of alienation through the prism of exaggerated and painstakingly crafted cliché perceptions. The camera’s rolling focus was intentionally changed from a brief loss of vision. The narrative flow of the story is skillfully written into the subtle changes of background noise occurring during an afternoon stroll. It seems conversations between lovers or friends follow a script. The seemingly random placement of items on the table has an intentional symbolic meaning.
Apart from brief explosions that seem to the imagination seemingly harmless, there is a more subtle threat lurking beneath the surface. According to Weinbren, “we begin to believe that life experiences that do not conform to this structure are deficient, and not vice versa,” is an accurate observation. Adorno reminds us how bad assumptions can cause us to hide behind the ideological illusions promoted by the business of culture.
Ignoring the more general arguments and concentrating on the film at hand, Call Me by Your Name is a story shaped and filtered through such a hyperreal point of view. Around the middle of the film, there is a subtle hint of this idea. It could be the first clear indication of how the film is essentially a film about filtered vision. It occurs in an inconsequential scene between two elderly Italian family neighbors, in which they argue about Italian politics and the apathy of the bourgeoisie. Amidst the hubbub, there was a brief but sharp exchange in which the old woman declared, “Cinema is not the answer.” With a sharp answer, the man replied, “Films are both a filter and a reflection of reality.”
As mentioned before, one of the main criticisms leveled at the film is how it presents the setting, characters, dialogue, and story so beautifully that the themes of self-affirmation and personal growth are disconnected from everyday life. Set in an undisclosed region of Northern Italy (a region historically imbued with idealized Western conceptions), the story takes place largely in the rural setting surrounding Elio’s family home, noted for its historic grandeur, large size, and visible household staff as well as its thriving peach orchards. fast.
Every scene in the film is of extraordinary quality; the location is always shown as lush, full of life, brightly lit, and full of fertility. The main protagonist’s daily life is concentrated on enjoying sumptuous meals, splashing in natural waters, riding bicycles around the picturesque countryside, and engaging in friendly social interactions. Each character in the film adopts an almost cartoonish representation of various idealized bourgeois qualities ranging from Oliver’s academic erudition and Elio’s early musical abilities to the constant family harmony and support of Elio’s parents.
Elio’s Subjective Experiences
Sporadically, Oliver and the professor carry out their professional duties involving documenting ancient statues recently discovered in a nearby lake. However, Elio was free from all duties. The only emotion permeating his life was awe. He spends his days doing activities such as writing, sunbathing, and making music, exploring the homogenous pool of childhood imagination.
At first, the film’s environment is so ideal that the audience feels isolated. As the story progresses, we will see changes in point of view making the presentation of fictional and imaginary stories seem important. Continuous, open-ended examination of the function of contrived stories in Elio’s life and the plot of Call Me by Your Name is evident throughout. Elio constantly tells different people about his endless love of reading; they are depicted as being engrossed in reading a book. Most notably, he gives Marzia a book as a gift then causes her to observe how well-read people tend to hide who they are.
Next, a scene occurs when their house loses power; Elio’s mother tells them a fairy tale from the sixteenth century revolving around the themes of courage and fear. It sparks a conversation between Elio and Oliver in the following scene, ending with the revelation of their romantic feelings for each other. The film’s storyline doesn’t just flow from disjointed fictional pieces. As expressed by the Italian neighbor’s early adage, it is intrinsically influenced by the pieces.
Call Me by Your Name uses a unique visual aesthetic to depict Elio’s subjective experiences. Metonymy, symbolism, and object-based representation of abstract ideas are widely used to achieve it. Throughout the film, ordinary objects are given symbolic meaning making it a powerful visual representation of desires, fears, and feelings.
It is an immediately visible symbolic language. The film’s main visual technique (the act of symbolic substitution) is first introduced to us in the opening credits, superimposed over a backdrop of statues. The main tool for communicating various human experiences (both covert and overt) becomes objects.
An early illustration occurs at the first family meal after Oliver’s arrival. Elio has been removed from his room; he saw Oliver crush the boiled egg quite hard. The egg yolk is seen running down the edge of the egg in a close-up, then Elio’s face is captured. Eggs become a recurring theme in the series, representing Elio’s unspoken sexual longings. Likewise, many other items in the film such as trees, shirts, fish, feet, and swimsuits also have symbolic meaning.
One example and reference to the motif is perhaps its emphasis on peaches. It leads to a scenario where Elio carefully follows the curve of the peach with his fingers before finally climaxing and piercing it with his thumb. Perfectly, the action captures the way the film uses ordinary objects to suggest and show the development of Elio’s sexuality.
The reading is similar to what Adorno and Max Horkheimer said about the intellectual legacy of the repressive enlightenment. They focus on the positivist framework of “everything with everything,” leading to a situation in which “nothing can at the same time be identical with itself.” The homogenizing influence of capitalism’s exchange rates or the lateral comparability of the written word are two examples of the phenomenon.
When Elio and Oliver are lying on the bed after having sex with their bodies intertwined, the camera takes the right angle and frames them in reverse. Oliver muttered to Elio in private time, “Call me by your name and I will call you by mine.” It’s a gentle and lyrical request. There is no doubt of the extraordinary compassion and poetic resonance of the reaction. It allows Elio and Oliver to hear their names spoken by their partners passionately. Each person has the opportunity to see the desires reflected by others through the exchange.
Oliver represents an interesting paradox in the Perlman household. On the one hand, he has a mortal cycle aspect. He is just one of many research assistants who come to see Professor Perlman for some time each summer; he is just one small part of a larger family story. “Better than last year’s man” and similar comparisons serve to emphasize his fleeting and repetitive character.
Oliver can be seen as a cinematic device, a screen through which Elio conveys his desires if viewed through a more theoretical lens. He is the embodiment of a focused fantasy: an attractive, intelligent, well-groomed person returning a young man’s bumbling affections. The film’s visual components further accentuate Oliver’s appeal, as his athleticism and sociability contrast sharply with Elio’s initial awkwardness.
However, Oliver does more than serve as a passive projection surface. Oliver’s point of view is revealed at the end of the film. Inverted color flashbacks reflect the change in focus, with Oliver taking the role of “camera” in the film as it revisits their experiences. Oliver is shown as a chronicler of their experiences, further supported by the final statement, “I remember everything,” uttered months after his departure.
In whatever way, the narrative complexity of Call Me by Your Name resists highly critical interpretation. Oliver’s role can also be examined in light of MacCormack’s notion of “cine-sexuality.” In the scene, Oliver transforms into a transformed “lover,” a figure encouraging emotional connection and self-discovery. Oliver acts as a trigger for Elio’s investigation of desire and selfhood through different perspectives.
Ultimately, Oliver plays a complex yet ambiguous role. He is a temporary guest and keeper of memories, a symbol of desire, and a source of personal development. The film offers an in-depth examination of love, memory, and the power of the cinematic image, and its complexity lies in its ability to accommodate the varying readings.
The End of the Summer
As Oliver’s departure nears, the story approaches a turning point driven by the clichés of the coming-of-age genre. Elio’s typically unbridled interest is overshadowed by an unprecedentedly approaching deadline. Elio is frightened and annoyed when he finds the fruit containing evidence of their closeness. The harsh reality of the situation had made the purity of his youth feel strange and embarrassing. Elio’s childish indulgence during their final journey results in reckless overindulgence and severe illness. The physical result was a harsh reminder of the limitations that come with youthful excess. Elio’s relationship with his grandiose imagination has become tense and complicated.
Regardless of the perfect atmosphere persisting until their final moments together, the approaching separation clouded their conversation. The interesting relationship they had seemed to fade as their departure date drew closer. Elio struggles with the idea of how the magic machines in the film are now like prosthetic limbs, only temporary. The ability to see life as a film masterpiece and feel comfortable in a love story as if it were taken straight from a film is not enough to fight the harsh reality of the outside world. The ideal illusions can explode when confronted with the complexity of reality or solidify into alienation triggered by social conditions.
Multiple Levels
Just based on the introduction, it can be said that Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name is on parallel levels of interpretation. These qualities make the film able to connect with many audiences in a very unique way. There is still a lot of room for interpretation even with established frameworks in the field of cinematic meta-discourse.
Guadagnino’s obsession with material luxury fits perfectly with the evocative representational paradigm of resort brochures and tourist advertising; it provides a strong foundation for critical and theoretical Marxist reading. According to this point of view, the seductive spectacle of the film is an implicit endorsement of the unequal distribution of pleasures available to the wealthy upper class.
Bibliography
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- Hewitt, A. (1992). A feminine dialectic of enlightenment? Horkheimer and Adorno revisited. New German Critique, (56), 143-170.
- MacCormack, P. (2005). A Cinema of Desire: Cinesexuality and Guattari’s A-signifying Cinema. Women: a cultural review, 16(3), 340-355.
- Ringrose, J., & Coleman, R. (2013). Looking and desiring machines: A feminist Deleuzian mapping of bodies and affects. Deleuze and research methodologies, 125-144.
- Shaviro, S. (2016). Post-cinematic affect.
- Tan, E. S. (2018). A psychology of the film. Palgrave Communications, 4(1).