Give 'Call Me By Your Name' the Best Picture Oscar

At 66/1, Luca Guadagnino's unforgettable movie is being criminally overlooked

(Sony)

As awards season has progressed it has become clear that Best Picture at the 90th Academy Awards is a two-horse race between Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - probably the film with the best original screenplay - and The Shape of Water - probably the film with the best direction. Neither are the Best Picture of the year, however, nor are third and fourth favourites, Lady Bird and Get Out - probably two of the best directorial debuts of all time - nor the fifth, Dunkirk - probably the best technical all-rounder in 2017 if we're to forget Blade Runner 2049 (as everyone seems to be).

No, the Best Picture is Call Me By Your Name. I'll tell you for why:

1) Call Me By Your Name is the Best Picture

How is this not the case? It is one of the greatest, most delicate, thoughtful and nuanced depictions in cinema history of love, its most explored subject.*

2) It is a completely refreshing proposition

Finally. Finally, a major LGBT movie where the only obstacle is humanity itself, the fact that, even when society actually allows two souls to come together, they still find a way to pull each other apart.

3) The acting is transcendental

Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer have done something amazing here. Call Me By Your Name is whatever the opposite of 'phoning it in' is; they're present, skin-to-skin, committing to establishing the purest connection possible, because they know this shit means a lot to people and deserves to be done right.

4) The ending is immaculate

Ending love stories is nigh on impossible because in real life they don't ever really end. On screen, they nearly always feel either disingenuously happy or cynically morbid. Call Me By Your Name's ending, however, somehow manages to simultaneously be naturalistic, straightforward, undramatic, even quotidian, and yet devastatingly moving. You know it's not the end of the world, but boy does it fucking feel like it.

5) It does a lot with relatively little

Call Me By Your Name isn't a showy film. There are no daring shots, no wild production design, no indulgent, auteurist flourishes from director Luca Guadagnino. It doesn't need it. It has already located beauty and need only observe it, handing the viewfinder to the audience and offering them a glimpse of humanity with unprecedented clarity.

Give Call Me By Your Name the Best Picture Oscar.

*"What about Phantom Thread?" cries are valid, but for an opinion-masquerading-as-fact post for another day.