CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and GOD'S OWN COUNTRY

Half a year ago we read the rhapsodic TLS review of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and, distracted by a few other demands, waited patiently for Netfix to offer it. In the meantime we had to deal with Joy Reid's inability to believe she had made the comments on same-sex affection that she seems to have made. We thought we might think of her as we watched, but we did not. Instead, I kept saying "How beautiful, how beautiful"--the interior of the house, the fruit. How much was filmed in Northern Italy? Then Armie Hammer came on, all six foot five of him, towering over Elio, and Armie is beautiful, too. And then we became aware of just how many hours had passed. Only an hour and a half? Against all policy, we said enough for today. It was hard to admit, but the movie had become v e r y s l o w. One of us used the word "boring." Next night we tried again, and did something we don't do--we ff'd a little, fast-forwarded. It was just too long. And it was just a tad creepy as it went along. Maybe it was Armie's height, maybe I am just afraid of tall men, maybe it just looked too much like the passages I have been reading in Genesis about mating with giants.

Then in checking the Internet, including Rotten Tomatoes, I got news of a quieter Netflix movie, God's Own Country, set in rural poverty or near-poverty in the north of England, similar story, very different setting. So Ivory won his Oscar, finally. This may be a better movie. I have never seen in a movie a depiction of someone whose body is being touched for the first time he can remember. This character started out as a drunken lout, but even drunken louts can be transformed, in time, it appears. And the depiction of upper body hugging in those moment is a revelation. I don't think anything like that has been filmed before. And there is sex, in this movie. And (what an innovation) there is nudity hours after sex, and talking. This is a movie to ponder, and some day see again.


But, oh, how beautiful some of the images are in Ivory's film!

And this morning Gus Cohen found the passage in Moses Mendelssohn I had been searching for.