WhenCall Me By Your Namewas released in 2017, it was met with a rapturous level of acclaim, with legions of people proclaiming ita milestone in the history of queer cinema. That acclaim led to major award success, with four Academy Award nominations:Best Picture, Best Lead Actor for itsat-the-time-exploding star,Timothée Chalamet, Best Original Song for “Mystery of Love” bySufjan Stevens, and ultimately winning Best Adapted Screenplay byJames Ivory. That sole win was of particular note, as it served as a proper blessing of respect to an individual whose prior film success made a film likeCall Me By Your Nameartistically possible.James Ivory was the key figure in one of the most important independent film productions of the 20th century, creating a space for the kind of tasteful and emotionally intelligent adult dramas that people crave more of in today’s mainstream cinema climate.
Call Me by Your Name
In 1980s Italy, romance blossoms between a seventeen-year-old student and the older man hired as his father’s research assistant.
James Ivory Created Merchant Ivory Productions With Ismail Merchant
In 1961,Ivory co-founded Merchant Ivory Productions withIsmail Merchant, his business and life partner, with “the initial aim of making English-language films in India for international audiences.” Their shared passion for filmmakers such asJean RenoirandSatyajit Rayinspired them to make films that were similarly incisive about the unspoken rules and restrictions of culture and spoke to many types of audiences in a lyrical manner. Their independently-minded and funded approach to filmmaking mostly consisted of Ivory as director, Merchant as producer, and novelistRuth Prawer Jhabvala, their close friend, as screenwriter. While they had initial success in the 1960s, they hit a major dry spell until 1979, when they madeThe Europeans. That adaptation of aHenry Jamesnovel became a modest art-house box office hit and proved to be the first example of what would become Merchant Ivory’s calling card:period pieces about people struggling to remain true to their feelings when living in social systems that seek to constrain them.With a series of films likeQuartet,Heat and Dust, andThe Bostonians, the trio continued to refine their approach to this material, eventually hitting on the film that would officially expand their profile beyond the arthouse.
A Room With a Viewwas the crossover hit that would make Merchant Ivory a household name, garnering high critical praise,a $21 million box officeagainst a $3 million budget, and three Academy Award wins. The story of Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) being stuck in a love triangle between the passionate intellectual George Emerson (Julian Sands) and the conservatively stuffy Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis) — which serves as a metaphor for the eternal struggle between social security and honest love — was the perfect encapsulation of how the Merchant Ivory approach could work on a larger scale. Multiple international film companies scrounging up the budget, shooting on location in lavish settings, and stacking the cast with a slew of talent playing characters from respected literature became the backbone on which Merchant Ivory would build their independent empire. With that newfound clout,Ivory set off to make a film that serves as the best example of why he was the perfect choice to help bringCall Me By Your Nameto life.
‘Maurice’ Represents Why James Ivory Was Perfect For ‘Call Me By Your Name’
Released in 1987,Mauriceis about the titular young man (James Wilby) who must come to terms with his homosexuality while attending Cambridge. He falls for his best friend Clive (Hugh Grant), and the two have an affair until Clive is scared into marrying a woman for the sake of security and reputation. In his pain and rejection, Maurice turns to the beautiful gardener Alec (Rupert Graves) for affection, pursuing the kind of passionate love with him that he couldn’t with Clive. This is one of the few Merchant Ivory films that Ivory wrote himself, since Jhabvala was occupied with another project, andhe was intrigued by howthe narrative felt “relevant” to a younger audience, indicating the eternal pain of “people’s turmoil and having to decide for themselves how they want to live and what their true feelings are and whether they’re going to live honestly with them or deny them.”
‘Challengers’ Serves Luca Guadagnino His Biggest Domestic Box Office Hit Yet
The romantic tennis drama surpassed Guadagnino’s previous biggest hit, ‘Call Me By Your Name.’
The way the film openlydepicts a gay relationship as a healthy and loving one, while still having to exist in the margins of a homophobic world, was radical for a film that came out at the height ofthe AIDS epidemic, with many critics pearl-clutching over its existence. But 30 years on,it stands as a landmark moment in queer cinema,being one of the most prominent filmsto fully display “full-frontal male nudity, gay lovemaking and unabashed declarations of same-sex desire, as well as a main character who was ultimately affirmative and unwavering about his homosexuality.” In the wake ofCall Me’s release, Ivory was asked many times about the connection between the two films, due to them both being about homosexual relationships, andhe insisted thatMauricewas a “story of stress” whileCall Mewas a “story of desire.”
‘Howards End’ and ‘Remains of the Day’ Were Merchant Ivory Productions High Points
Nevertheless, Merchant Ivory survived past the disappointing response toMaurice, hitting its high-water mark in the early 1990s, with the one-two punch ofHowards EndandThe Remains of the Day. Once again, they were adaptations of novels about privileged men (both times played byAnthony Hopkins)forced to confront the suppressed desires that have dominated the major decisions they’ve made in life. Both films use unfortunate social rules and tragically shortsighted human behavior to illuminate the need for humans to connect with each other and savor the emotional bonds we can create. Both films were met with (say it with me) rapturous acclaim, with three Oscar wins for the former and eight Oscar nominations for the latter. Sadly, Merchant Ivory never matched the heights that these two films reached as it pertained to mainstream crossover success, butit solidified how dominant a force they, and by extension, James Ivory, had been throughout the previous decade as a new breed of arbiters of cinematic taste. Ivory had effectively retired from filmmaking after 2009, so it was a significant surprise that he came back for the production ofCall Me By Your Name, even more so in a position he wasn’t as used to.
James Ivory’s Oscar Win For ‘Call Me By Your Name’ Connects to His Long Legacy
In adaptingAndré Aciman’s novel,Ivory largely wrote it out"scene by scene" verbatim, thencut out multiple parts(usually for budget or pacing reasons), whileoccasionally adding new scenes. For instance, there was an entire trip to Rome between Elio (Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) that had to be cut because of budget concerns. While the film is largely faithful to the book in terms of which events are included, he made major adjustments to the length and structure. He had to figure out how to make the infamous peach scene work on the screen, and he shortened the important speech that Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg) gives to Elio down to its most meaningful elements.
Most notably,he decided that the storyshould only remain in the present moment, as opposed to the flashback structure of the book, as well as end right after Oliver leaves Elio for good, capping it off with the now iconic Elio crying scene after they have one last call. The script is surprisingly free of dialogue for numerous scenes, preferring to bathe in the languor of the gradual buildup and gentle exploration of the dynamic of Elio and Oliver.The dialogue that is there is often a potent combination of meandering family conversations, fumbling attempts at flirtation, and intelligent staging of the interaction between actors and environment, all elevated with Guadagnino’s extraordinary ability to squeeze the sensuality out of every last motion and piece of scenery.
All told, the script is a masterpiece in letting its characters speak louder with their actions than their actual words and creating a world that’s infused with the pristine preciousness of a fond memory. The beauty of James Ivory finally winning an Oscar for a film likeCall Me By Your Nameis thatit’s exactly the kind of movie he would have made in his glory days. The theme of evolving as a human by pursuing your strongest desires, the irony of deeply suffocating emotions surrounded by flourishing scenery, and the subtle streaks of observational and societal humor baked into every scene — all of these were hallmarks of the best that Merchant Ivory Productions had to offer. Luca Guadagnino referred to Ivory as “the godfather of us all” when asked about his involvement, and one imagines him thinking of all the films Ivory had shepherded throughout his life when saying that.
In his memoirs, Ivory discussed how he felt “pride” and “satisfaction that I had won for writing,” indicating his pleasure at proving himself once more so late in his life. you may tell the gratification he felt at the success ofCall Me By Your Name, describing it best toThe Hollywood Reporter, “Right on down to now, people are just crazy about it and it’s very interesting. And I think audiences are probably really quite hungry for stories like that, which are just unavowed romances and done lightly.Something that’s light in tone and notsome huge melodramaor something.” That’s about the most succinct way he could describe his own catalog, validating the connection that even the Academy saw between that film and his remarkable legacy.
Call Me By Your Namecan be watched on Prime Video in the U.S.
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