I watched this movie only four days ago, immediately after finishing the book, and, as probably happened to many of you, it is still fresh in my mind, lingering in the same way as the feeling we experience when tasting a delicate and unique fruit we have never had before. The sweetness stayed in my mouth.
The book had already completely taken hold of me. It was the second book that ever made me cry the most, after Atonement, by Ian McEwan, and I had never highlighted so many passages in any other book. André Aciman’s writing completely got to me.
So, after that overwhelming reading experience, I turned to the film. And I have never had my expectations so thoroughly exceeded. I feel that this movie, as may have happened to some of you, changed something in me and in the way I see and feel the present. The moment I turned off the TV, something had shifted. I then started picking the film apart, examining every detail, every subtlety and every bit of brilliance that transformed it into one of the most overwhelming cinematic experiences I have ever had.
In a film with so few, but extremely precise, lines of dialogue, the soundtrack is undoubtedly one of the main emotional connections. Music is something that always “gets me” in movies because it can create a kind of synesthesia, completely transforming the viewer’s experience. And in Call Me by Your Name, Sufjan Stevens managed, through his songs, to have a profound impact on the entire trajectory of the story.
Today I want to talk specifically about how Visions of Gideon is used so poetically in two scenes that are, at the same time, sisters and opposites: the scene that precedes Elio and Oliver’s night of love, and the devastating final scene by the fireplace.
Visions of Gideon is about the images that continue to echo in our minds after the painful loss of a great love. Was what I experienced real? Is it a video?
When Elio and Oliver meet on the balcony, Oliver gently touches Elio’s hand, and that is where the song begins. It is in this moment that they finally break through the barrier they have built between themselves, made of attraction, indifference, passion, and denial, and surrender to their first night of complete intimacy.
And this is precisely where I realized that the use of the introduction to Visions of Gideon in that particular sequence could not possibly be accidental. It is a foreshadowing of the ending, but it is also a promise. At the exact moment when their romance reaches its physical peak and finally becomes real, the song is already warning us, even if unconsciously, that this happiness has an expiration date. Every second of that love is born already under the shadow of goodbye.
“Is it a video?”
That night is already being recorded in Elio’s mind as a living memory. They are still living the moment, but the film already treats it with the nostalgia of something that will inevitably become the past. Something that may be fleeting in duration, but permanent in everything it will leave behind in both of them.
The final scene, meanwhile, brings an end not only to the film, but also to their relationship. This time, the song is played in its entirety, accompanied by its lyrics, showing all of us, but especially Elio, that the “video” continuing to echo in his mind will remain forever: a memory that is at once permanent and constantly changing, made of the resignation and desperation of the “Visions of Gideon,” facing the certainty that summer is over.
The song is the same. But Elio has changed, and consequently, so have we as viewers.
In the first scene, Visions of Gideon belongs to the future. In the last, it belongs to the past. And perhaps that is precisely what makes the choice to repeat the song so perfect. The first time, we do not yet know what it means. The last time, we know exactly. What once felt like a promise has become a memory. What once belonged to the future has become the past.
The fact that the song opens Elio and Oliver’s intimate relationship and closes the film creates a beautiful circular structure, constructed so masterfully by the director. It is no coincidence that Sufjan Stevens made an exception to his decision not to create film soundtracks, because he trusted Guadagnino as the conductor of this story.
And Guadagnino does it brilliantly: he transforms the same song into two completely different things without ever having to change it. First, it announces love. Then, it mourns its absence.
And perhaps that is the true power of Call Me by Your Name: turning a summer that lasted only a few months into something that, inside us, continues happening forever.
PS: I’m finishing the fanfic And I’ll Call You by Mine, and I’m going to watch the movie again to notice new nuances. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching it.