Lists are beautiful. Films are beautiful. Opinions are subjective. Some films that we see now- some made for kids, some made in other languages, some made in 'trashy' genres- will one day become classics. Which ones? Here's my entirely subjective gaze into the crystal ball with my picks of the best films of the 2010s...
Call Me By Your Name
Could there be a more perfect combination of elements than
Italy, Sufjan Stevens music, classical statuary, Arnie Hammer and Timothy
Chalamet? This film dances (like a dad of course) on the fine line between
artful and pretentious. The story is intended to make us as viewers fall in love with its lounging, lazy middle-class aesthetic- reclining by the pool is only interrupted by trilingual conversations- as much as the characters and their emotions. In adapting his source material, though, director Luca Guadagnino makes one excellent decision after another,
scrapping a wanky poetry reading from the book and giving characters that aren’t Elio more of
a 3D reality outside of his intense perspective. Chalamet’s Elio is elfin and
half-formed, seething too much inside to be graceful. He makes expansive
movements that still have a awkward, jerky quality. For all his intelligence he
is simple: an open book, who handily even writes his thoughts down on Post-it notes and abortive messages to Oliver. Oliver on the other hand is elusive. The whole film is
an exercise in trying to know Oliver. Hammer outwardly is statuesque and placid
but this is the result of his character’s inner walls and barriers (the
screenplay hints at a repressive upbringing in the US). The moments of freedom
he allows himself with Elio seem to spark a boyish joy in him, despite the
undertow of fear. Some things are oft-mentioned when discussing this film, for
instance, the brave ending of Chalamet staring into the fire. The
score, too, is remarkable, and so much more than Sufjan (though this is peak, sensitive,
plinky plinky Sufjan). I challenge you not to have Hallelujah Junction and Love
My Way in your head for days after watching this. It is testament to the film’s
greatness, though, that every rewatch draws out new details. Here are some that
leap out at me. Elio is reading Heart of Darkness just before the famous peach
moment (a seminal moment in the films of the decade, in every sense) , a
ridiculous contrast that speaks so well to melodramatic teenage emotions. The
first plangent chords of Sufjan’s Visions of Gideon, which finishes
the movie, play even the first time Elio enters Oliver’s room to make love; the
film always has one eye on the end. Like the opening crawl of the Imperial Star
Destroyer in A New Hope, the camera makes the train on which Oliver eventually departs
seem to extend forever.
I can talk about the objective qualities of this film
forever but for me (like any other honest critic) those are only part of the
story. Imagine watching such a beautiful gay romance unfold while attending a
secondary school where gay is a joke word. Imagine watching the scene where
Elio’s father talks to him about love with your own father, at the end of a year
when your parents’ divorce has uprooted your home life. The truthfulness of this
film has meant that people see themselves there. Some have argued that this is the 'straight people's gay film' because in the scene where gay sex takes place the camera pans away (to a tree, and not even the sexiest of trees). But as an LGBTQ person I never saw it this way. Most of the physical romantic interaction in the film is portrayed as charming but clunkily awkward. This pan away allows the viewer's own imagination to supply a metaphysical perfection that physical reality cannot attain. And in a film that has been used to sell countless holidays, here is something not being marketed.
Next Time: less piano, more fire-spewing electric guitar.
