The ongoing halo and hype around the movie Call me By Your Name compels a movie lover to watch it and a movie critic to cross-analyze it. After years of romanticized virtual bombardment, I finally gave in and decided to watch the movie.
In the movie, Timothée Chalamet plays 17 year old Elio who falls for and becomes physically intimate with 24 year old Oliver who is played by Armie Hammer.
What’s visually undisputable is that Timothée Chalamet in the film looks 14 and Armie Hammer looks 35.
Since the movie came out in 2018, not only have we ignored the film’s optically inappropriate foundation and haunting reminder. We have widely acclaimed and applauded the film because of Chalamet’s pretty privilege, poetic allure and the “European” theme of the movie.
In addition to the problematic, provocative optics of the movie. The movie itself is made with unabashed mediocrity, completely devoid of any directorial identity and originality.
It doesn’t take an NYU film student nor a professional film critic to actually tell how mediocre the movie is. Call Me By Your Name’s clear and conspicuous mediocrity is due to multilayered reasons.
Forced imitation
Call Me By Your Name is filled with forced faux quirkiness, eeriness and unfit cinematic aesthetic shots. All in attempts to imitate atypical renowned film references that serve as cinematic textbooks to be inspired by, but not to be robotically copied.
Disconnected incoherence
The movie’s director Luca Guadagnino seemed so emotionally disengaged from the movie that he ended up creating a disconnected, disorganized video clip in a picturesque place. Not a movie.
The disconnection of the director from the movie is the core reason why it hasn’t soulfully moved me for a second throughout its supposedly sentimental and vulnerable scenes.
Aloof acting
Given it was the beginning of his career, Timothée Chalamet’s acting was undeveloped and unremarkable with the exception of a few scenes. Circling back to how overrated the movie is, Chalamet’s amateur acting in the movie has earned him his first Oscar nomination for best actor.
As for Chalamet’s co-star, Armie Hammer was playing a snobby, slightly ill-mannered American so his detached dispassion throughout the movie did reasonably make sense. However, judging from Hammer’s previous roles, it’s safe to say that this is his intrinsic demeanor which he hasn’t been able to flexibly flip around through skilled acting when it was required. Hammer did fit the role aesthetically but not craftily. Casting Hammer could have been because of the movie’s limited budget or it could’ve been yet another disconnected decision complementing the already-existing mediocrity.
Michael Stuhlbarg who played Mr. Perlman is the only actor in the movie who gave a remarkably poignant performance especially during his heart-to-heart confessional conversation with Chalamet (his son) at the end of the movie.
A handful of scenes in addition to the picturesque setting of the movie are the only redeeming elements about it but definitely not enough to sweep under the rug its problematic foundation and to relentlessly romanticize it for years.
By : Hania Elweleily
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