Precious youth is short-lived, like a dream.
The film Call Me By Your Name is an adaptation of writer Andre Assimann's novel of the same name, set somewhere in northern Italy in the summer of 1983, and tells the story of 17-year-old Elio (Timothy Chalame) falling in love with visiting graduate student Oliver (Amy Hammer).
Tall, handsome, and full of confidence, for an introverted teenager who has never really been in love and loves to play and compose, falling in love with this "Adonis" in a buttoned shirt is like discovering a new language of communication with the outside world.
"Call Me By Your Name" is also a love letter to Italy.
The long shots in the film sweep through peach groves and idyllic country lanes, and you can almost feel the heat of the sun shining on your skin and on the grass under your toes.
In describing those laid-back summer days, director Luca Guadagnino's attention to detail creates a perfectly believable microscopic world, from the taste of freshly picked fruit, to the touch of lovers' hands, to fantastic music that almost brings the viewer into Elio's skin. Watching this movie is like spying on the intimate moment when two people fall in love.
When planning the soundtrack of the film, the director also put in a hard work.
From classical music to 1980s pop songs, they're all about emphasizing the mood in the movies, away from tacky pastime and nostalgia. The appearance of music is not an afterthought, but is often written into the scene as if it were an important character.
In the novel, Elio is portrayed as a talented musician who excels at adapting music and playing the piano. In the film, the piano has long been an integral part of the scene, and the piano music is also the highlight of the soundtrack.
In the living room, for example, Elio triple-plays Bach's Cantata excerpt "Zion die Wachter singen", each time imitating the version of personality that a different composer might play, twisting and turning with Oliver. In addition, you can also hear the piano music of French composers Satie and Ravel in the film.
Popular European hits of the 1980s are also scattered throughout the film, seemingly casually, but in fact they are deliberately immersed. In Italian bars, dances, volleyball courts, and streets, they flow out of the loudspeakers, and they also come out of the radio as Elio hides in the attic exploring the mysteries and hormones of the body.
Elio accompanies the newcomer Oliver to the bar, and a cigarette voice of Italian singer Lolaidana Bate, accompanied by a Gaulian accordion, floats out with J'adore Venise.
Oliver and the boys and girls play volleyball, charismatic, and murderous, elusive, and Elio sits on the sidelines, while the French band Bandolero's Paris Latino looms, cheerfully chanting "Miss Chacha" amid the percussions of Maracas.
At the disco, Oliver and a girl do a veneer dance, and Elio gets jealous and jumps in. Italian singer Giorgio Morrodel's ballad "Lady Lady" and British Psychedel's rock classic Love My Way tour between steaming young men and women.
"Lady, Lady, Lady" was all the rage in the spring of 1983 and was at the top of the list for young people, and after being placed in the movie, the lyrics "Dancing behind masks, just subtle pantomime/But images reveal whatever lonely hearts can hide" The picture reveals everything that a lonely heart can hide) as if it were written specifically for Elio and Oliver.
Elio's relationship with Oliver is secret, so their conversations usually have codes, and the music hides a lot of secret information.
At the moment when Elio decides to showdown and writes a letter to Oliver, Ryuichi Sakamoto's Germination is quoted in the film to depict the budding love between the two. Another single by Ryuichi Sakamoto, "M.A.Y.in the Backyard," was also included in the film.
"Germination" is from the 1983 film "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" released by Nagisa Oshima, "musical genius" Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Bowie handsome, in the film as Japanese Captain Senoi, British Army Shōsa Jack, staged an ambiguous emotion. Ryuichi Sakamoto also took the initiative to ask for help and wrote the soundtrack for the movie.
The film also features two original songs by American folk singer Sophie-yo Stevens, "Mystery of Love" and "Visions of Gideon", and re-recorded his "Futile Devices" at piano, which originally appeared on the album The Age of Adz.
All three songs appear in scenes with little dialogue, representing three different stages of elio and Oliver's relationship, like voiceover or narration, being the film's "narrator."
Futile Devices is hesitant and eager. Shortly after Elio and Oliver confess their attraction to each other, Elio sits under a tree waiting for the unguided Oliver, and Futile Devices first appears.
Originally accompanied by a brisk guitar, Stevens changed to a more distant, melancholic piano sound that told Elio's difficult to humanize.
As Elio and Oliver travel to Bergamo, happily running and shouting through the green woods, Mystery of Love rings out, and Stevens' sweet, fragile singing voice runs through the guitar and mandolin, almost indistinguishable from whispering.
The lyrics of the song are like Elio's inner monologues, capturing his deepest longing. The lyrics mention Alexander the Great and his male lover Hefestian, the two are young and bamboo, and when they grow up, they march south and north together, although there are countless lovers, But Hefestian has always been Alexander's favorite in life.
Both the scene and the song are bittersweet, as both protagonists know that their time together is coming to an end and that the summer can't last forever.
Visions of Gideon appears in the final scene of the film, and Elio is heartbroken when he receives a call from Oliver about to get married.
Amid the bewildered piano and muffled percussion, Elio reminisced about his old feelings with tears in his eyes, silent, but the lyrics replaced him with the question over and over again, "Is it a video?" Is it a video?” (Is this love just an illusion, just a game?) ）
"Elio sat down at the fire, weeping for a moment, laughing with tears in his eyes, and a moment returning to indifference in his eyes, as if in just a few minutes he had spent that summer again, and many more times in this life." The text with the highest number of likes on Douban vividly describes Elio's inner activities at this moment.
The reason for thinking of Stevens, the director said, was that his singing voice sounded poignant and elusive, and he wanted to wrap the film in Stevens' voice.
When the song was invited, the director sent Stevens the original and then the script. Stevens was on tour at the time, but quickly wrote the song. Stevens often felt that there shouldn't be music in movies, but the director showed him a very different side, "He's the kind of director whose use of music and sound is so intense and so skilful that you can't imagine what a film would look like without music." ”
Like the right casting, well-designed scenes, and costumes, the music in "Call Me by Your Name" is also a radiant work of art, which travels through key scenes and provides a channel for conveying the character's deepest emotions.
As the lush scenery hits you, you'll involuntarily step back in time to Italy in the 1980s. This movie will keep you immersed in it, and after the credits scroll and the screen turns black, it will still be immersed in your mind for a long time.
Director and two lead actors
【Dialogue】
(Note: The dialogue part is compiled from Billboard and Pitchfork)
Question: How did you come up with the idea of asking Sophie-o-Stevens to compose music?
Director: I believe Stevens is one of the greatest artists in America. When someone introduced me to his music a few years ago, I was fascinated by his voice. The more I studied him, the more I discovered the greatness of his lyrics, the complexity of his work.
Ask: Why is his voice and his musical style important to this film?
Director: I want to have a narrative, not an ordinary narrator. When you listen to his music, it's like hearing Elio's voice, in a sense, that's what the film is about.
I think Stevens brought three things. First of all, the lyrics he wrote are evocative, very, very sharp, and can evoke everyone's different imaginations. Secondly, his music is pure, poetic, and simple, which is exactly the trait I pursued for this film. In the end, his voice was like crystal, like an angel. The combination of the three is wonderful.
Question: Did he write music before filming started?
Director: After only a week of shooting, he sent us the music and we were shocked when we got it.
Question: So, what does he rely on to compose music? Is it just a script and a book?
Director: Scripts, books, exchanges.
Question: Have you ever sent him an image or photograph of the villa (Elio's home)?
Director: Hmmm... Not really.
Question: When you talk to him, do you mean that you want to use the music in a particular scene, or that it is enlightening and that we will put it somewhere in the movie.
Director: Inspiring.
Question: When you get the songs, do you immediately know where to put them in the movie?
Director: Hearing Visions of Gideon, I immediately realized that this was the last song in the movie.
About Mystery of Love, we had a brief conversation with editor Walter to link it to the experience of the two protagonists hiking.
Futile Devices was originally used in work scenes, but when we rewatch the movie and see Elio thinking of Oliver melancholy, we immediately realize that's where the song should be.
Question: The first time you took the song back, you gave Amy and Timothy a ride, and what was their reaction?
Director: Well, in my living room, I, Walter, Amy, Timothy are there. I still remember that we were very happy and touched.
When you make a movie, you can think of it as a job, or you can think of it as a part of your life. We treat it as a part of our lives, inseparable. Then we hear the songs, and we're much more engaged in the film. We are surrounded by this magic. We listened to songs for an afternoon.
Question: "Visions of Gideon" plays at the end of the film, a song that is crucial to the film.
Director: There's a line at the end of the play that says, "Elio stares at the flames and thinks back to his life." "I've long thought about using a lens to represent this picture. I also thought about adding different kinds of songs in that moment, but those thoughts were all before I got the music from Stevens.
After Stevens gave me the song, I started listening to it just a week after I shot it. I, the editors, Amy, and Timothy, were struck by the beauty, persistence, and attitude of these songs. We immediately discovered that Visions of Gideon was the perfect song for Elio to reflect on this moment in his life. While shooting this shot, I put the headphones in Timothy's ear and played the song for him.
Question: The film started with John Adams' Hallelujah Junction, and your 2009 film I Am Love also used his music, why did you like him?
Director: In 2005, I discovered John Adams while cutting a film in Spain. It was my birthday, and Gareth Wigham, a Sony executive I worked with, gave me the gift of the music that Adams had created, innocent and sad.
I put the disc on the CD and heard the first note, and I was immediately struck by the musical world of Adams. I began to delve deeper into him, to find recordings of his music as far as I could, and I was like an encyclopedia documenting everything he had done as a musician.
There's something Wagner-esque in his music, and there's something minimalist in his music, which is wonderful because he breaks the strict rules that the minimalists set for themselves. His musical world is full of wisdom, with the ability to interpret reality, interpret history, interpret American history, and even understand the boundaries of music, thus subtly exploring human nature and the political relationships that bind us all together.
Adams came to me often. That moment in 2005 was transformative and changed my life as a director forever. I have an ambition, maybe one day, Adams will write the soundtrack for me, saying that this is really a little blushing.
Question: In the movie "I Am Love", how did you use his music?
Director: I shot under his music and cut the film with his music, and cruelly, we didn't have access to his music. Tilda Swinton (the film starred) wrote him a letter in which he replied, "I'd love to see your movie." "We showed it to him, and after the movie, he turned to us and asked, "Great." I am very happy. Can you put Adams' music in the theme? "It was exactly what I wanted to do, and I didn't dare ask, but he asked out.
Question: You use the piano in many of your films, both in the script and in the soundtrack, what is your relationship with the instrument?
Director: I don't know. I'm not an expert. By the way, I listen to music by intuition. I like to use the piano as a kind of dialogue.
Ryuichi Sakamoto has a beautiful album, Back to the Basics, in which he reflects on his roots, as you can see in Ravel's work. He wrote beautiful piano poems, inspired by the great French composer. That album made me discover that the piano is related to dialogue.
In Call Me By Your Name, we make heavy use of the piano, in a way, the notes are the internal dialogue between Elio and himself, and the external dialogue between Elio and Oliver.
Ask: What were you listening to when you were Elio's age?
Director: I was listening to the soundtrack of the movie. I think I was listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Question: Were the songs you listened to when you were 17 cool?
Director: I don't understand what cool is. I've seen a lot of people spend their lives trying to be cool. No, I never would, to pretend to be cool or to do something because it was cool. I do it because I like it.
In 1987, I went to see Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, and I was blown away by the film and the soundtrack, the product of a collaboration between composers David Byrne, Satoshi Su, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. I bought CDs and put them over and over again. No one knew, and I was alone in my bedroom listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto. I do this because it is a deep inspiration to me.
Question: Elio seems to be hesitating between two kinds of thinking, one that is more classical and more rational, and the other that he just wants to be a child and get excited about young rock and roll. What you listen to determines what kind of person you are at that age.
Director: I agree with you. But I don't think that a child who grew up in the classical world must lack an understanding of the popular world, and to be in the classical world means not to be in the real world.
I don't think Elio, a bright young man who wants to be a great pianist, lives in a world of culture and has recognized that culture is a closed product of elitism that gives life only to the fine arts. He recognized that culture is part of a complex life, and that life is all-encompassing.
Question: "Call Me By Your Name" and your 2015 film "Holiday Thriller" both have very prominent dances, and the picture of Ralph Fiennes (starring in the film) dancing to the music of the Rolling Stones is now legendary, how did it come about?
Director: Well, there's a great line in the script written by Dave Kayganic, "Dance, this is life." "We saw the way he danced, and that's the guideline for me and Ralph Fiennes.
Question: Did you like the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue before the filming of Holiday Horror?
Director: You ask me if I like this song? Of course! I will be in full control of my work. I would never put a song in a movie that I didn't think was worth it.
Question: How was the scene where the actors danced under the disco in "Call Me By Your Name" designed?
Director: We have a consultant who designs dances for the extras. They need to play the children of the 1980s, but they are the children of the 2000s. Amy created his own dance and adapted it precisely according to history, and then Timothy jumped in and adapted his own, which was great. It's a mix of historical accuracy and talent.
Question: Do you like dancing?
Director: If I'm drunk, I will. But I don't drink much, so I've only happened three or four times in my life. The last time I was drunk and dancing was at the Call Me By Your Name party.
Question: What were you listening to at the time?
Director: I was a DJ and only played music from the 1980s, from internationally famous classics to mundane Italian music.
Question: Were you a big fan of Italian disco in the 1980s?
Director: No, I'm more interested in 1980s pop music — like Mina, Patti Pravo, Loleidana Bate — which we use in movies.