The original post: /r/movies by /u/LemonLate on 2024-12-29 22:14:42.

SPOILERS

I somehow never got around to watching this movie, and now I can’t function. There’s nothing more brutal or beautiful than the way Elio repeats, “Because I wanted you to know.”

I’ve learned that love isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s butterflies and other times it’s an overbearing feeling of the weight of the world. The cast replicating the perfect depiction of what love feels like despite it being nearly impossible to replicate is impressive.

This film encapsulates the journey of falling in love so well. Is it all worth it? Are the short, beautiful memories of looking at the person you’re in love with worth the hours of agonizing pain when you’re not around them? Is the obsesssion normal? Is it all worth it in the end?

In the end when Mr. Perlman notices how sad Elio is, and tells him that what he had with Oliver was a truly special friendship, and eludes that he knows it was more than just that. He tells Elio not to cut himself off from his feelings to not feel grief because then you lose the ability to feel the kind of joy he felt with Oliver. He tells him about how he came close, but never had the kind of connection that they had. Mr. Perlman says,

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty. And have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything? What a waste.”

The universal understanding for so many queer people with those heart shattering sentences. Those whose lives have been dictated and are unable to pursue their natural instincts. Their ability to love has been restricted, threatened. The decades of generations who have wasted their lives out of fear from our deeply rooted homophobic society.