What Does Call Me By Your Name Mean To Me?

What does Call Me By Your Name mean to me?

Many of the greatest films of all time have never won Academy Awards. Many of the best films were never even nominated for Oscars. CMBYN was nominated for 4 Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay by James Ivory. We have to remember that critiques, reviews and awards are all subjective. It is one person or a group of eligible voters consensus on what is the "best" for that year. The film is the art. The film will stand the test of time. Many films find their audience well after their run in theaters. Sometimes, it takes years for this to happen. Many movies do not do well at the box office and fade from theaters. The CMBYN fandom is huge, it's massive and it is global.

This Academy Award winning cinematic masterpiece is breathtaking. The film is changing lives. It has changed my life. No film has impacted my life like this since Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies and Videotape in 1989.

The relationship that develops between Elio and Oliver is a reminder to all of us about our first love. Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer embodied Elio and Oliver beautifully and left us mesmerized. The film has resonated deeply amongst it's most loyal supporters. It is beautiful, it is devastating. It is hopeful, it is heartbreaking. It made me realize that life is short and every single fucking day needs to be lived to the fullest. The film has helped me to make the decision to come out to live my life as a gay man. I think I had been living in a state of limbo for so long that I didn't feel anything. CMBYN made me feel again. It made me want to live. It has made me want to live life again. It has made me want to explore all the things I have been afraid to do in life for so long. As I continue on my journey, I will be making a trip to Italy to visit as many CMBYN filming locations as I can on my Eat, Pray, Love Tour.

I know that many of us in the CMBYN fandom have been disappointed with the award season this year. I am generally a very pessimistic person but I'm choosing optimism. Look at every thing this small little independent film has achieved from start to finish. Andre Aciman wrote this magnificent love story in 2007 and it took 10 years for this masterful work of Art to make it to the big screen. The film earned 4 Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for James Ivory (the oldest nominee and now winner in this category), Best Original Song Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevens and Best Actor for Timothée Chalamet (the youngest nominee to be nominated in this category in 80 years). The film has gone on to be a worldwide success and global phenomenon.

As with any piece of Art, it is timeless and will be appreciated in the years and decades to come. But the CMBYN fandom was here from the beginning. We identified with Elio and Oliver. We hoped to become like The Perlman's. We lost ourselves in the film's spectacular cinematography, set design, costumes and music soundtrack. We fell in love with Olio while exploring their love for one another that evolves naturally between two human beings. No labels just natural love. We felt their pain upon their separation. (A heartbreaking, devastating pain that has lasted months since I saw the film, much like life.) But in all the heartbreak, we experienced love and for that we have to surmise to not cry because it's over, but to smile because it happened.

"We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only."

André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name