I was awake until a little after 2 a.m. last night, curled up with my cats, watching a film. Call Me By Your Name. I've been wanting to watch it since I learned about it in advance of the Oscars, but I haven't turned on a television other than to watch something with my kids in probably a month. Or perhaps more. Wow. maybe it's been two. I've been exhausted to the bone with just Life, and I haven't had it in me to absorb anything emitted from a TV.
But I'm so glad I finally watched this film. It won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay this year, and it was nominated for best picture and best actor. And a song from the film was nominated for best song. Not that any of the nominations really matter, except to say that it got a lot of attention. And when I finally watched it? It arrested mine.
It was such a beautiful portrait of love. The messy, scary, uncomfortable, mind-scrambling nature of it. And also the sheer joy, drug-like, that commandeers hearts and minds when it burrows in.
First, the song. The song from the film that was nominated was by Sufjan Stevens entitled Mystery of Love. I heard it many times before I saw the film, but its placement in the story was so very beautiful. Perfect even. Like puzzle pieces falling into place. This song will surely be on my playlist for a long time to come. I already had an album by Sufjan Stevens before this that I loved. His whispery voice (maybe that of a distant cousin of Sam Beam of Iron & Wine) is so calming and yet he sings of real things, sometimes sad things. Achingly beautiful.
The story itself is a coming of age love story. And it's told in the most picturesque location in Northern Italy with captivating attention to detail that left me beside myself. And the tumult, passion, and humanity of it all, in vision and in story, is humbling to behold. Watch this film.
And I hesitate to include the clip below, but I will. Admittedly, the clip and the sentence that follows is a bit of a spoiler, but I just can't keep quiet about it. After an affair of historic proportions and a loss that followed, the professor-father of the main character, Olio, delivers a monologue of epic proportions to soothe his son's heartache. I totally bawled through it. (Ignore the subtitles, but at least I found the monologue.)
I almost feel as if the time I spent waiting to watch something paid off in the quality of what was delivered when I finally did watch something. If I am assured films of this much beauty will follow after waiting for weeks and weeks to even turn on the television to any adult programming of any kind, maybe I'll wait months again before watching anything else.
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