Grace Pinkus

March 15th, 2019

Cinema Scene Analysis

Muench

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For this assignment I chose the closing scene of Call Me By Your Name. In this scene we see Elio, played by Timothee Chalamet walk into the dining room after his last phone call with Oliver. Chalamet’s several-minute display of sadness is an huge feature on fragility that’s rare in cinema. In an interview with ET online about this particular scene, he says “There aren’t six people coming in and making you aware of the camera every two seconds,” he said. “Particularly, like, that last scene that plays out by the fire, there wasn’t a camera guy behind the camera. We were shooting on film, too, so they can’t just keep punching in digitally. You lost the sense there was a camera there, to the extent that maybe we lost some scenes because we weren’t even cheated out enough to the camera.” After looking into how this scene was made, I realized how Chalamet was able to invoke such a strong emotional response out of the viewers. This scene works to show us a side of Elio that we haven’t seen before and shows the audience how much of an effect saying goodbye had on him. As Elio moves into the dining room and in front of the fire, the DOP follows the rule of thirds and has Elio looking down at the fire in the left third of the frame, and the gorgeous fireplace filling the right two thirds of the frame; creating a good cinematic shot. As Elio moves to squat in front of the fire, the camera steadily follows him. 42 seconds in, the camera switches from this shot to a close up shot focusing on his face. The background goes out of focus however we can still see the snow falling, giving off a sense of cold loneliness. The fact that there is no dialogue in this scene adds to rawness of it. 54 seconds in the music starts. he sad piano music that is playing in the background while this is all happening adds to the feeling that the audience is meant to feel. Throughout the scene, the fire is crackling in the background which is something I really liked. In relation to this, I noticed that as the camera switches to Elio’s face, the lighting changes as the fire crackles in front of him. About two minutes in, the focus remains on his face, however the maids move into the frame behind him and start setting the table. After watching this scene many times, I noticed a lot of small things that I would have never noticed if I didn’t take cinema. I noticed the way the camera moved as Elio entered the room, how they transitioned from one shot to another, and all of the decisions that had to go into adding so much feeling into just one scene. I have learned a lot about how to analyze a scene and what goes into making a movie and I pay attention to these details everytime I watch something. I can’t wait to learn more!