To be clear, Ivory should not be the only person winning that adapted screenplay Oscar this year – the director, Luca Guadagnino, also played a significant role in tempering Ivory's more outrageous impulses (namely, location shooting all over Italy and several instances offull-frontal male nudity). I just find it both amazing and inspiring that an 89-year-old can somehow capture the bubbling emotions of adolescent first love, especially considering that he made his career directing adaptations of British costume dramas.
The writing of Call Me by Your Name has such vitality and simplicity, perfectly capturing the immediacy and theatricality of budding first love. The script does not have the screwball, million-words-per-minute intensity of Sorkin's work in Molly's Game, nor is it like Logan, the ultimate cathartic franchise finale with allusions to Shane. The beauty of Ivory's script really comes from absence – choosing to let actions speak louder than words or expressing complex thoughts through little bits of casual dialogue. Even the Oscar-worthy monologue by Professor Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) benefits from what Ivory chose not to include. Maybe this scene embodies the kind of chat Ivory and Guadagnino wish they could have had with their fathers, or maybe it is just a universally moving scene. Nevertheless, I would consider the film and its screenplay a masterpiece, which easily transcends classification as a "gay movie," "art film," "Eurotrash," or just another period drama. Of course it is a period art film about a homosexual relationship in Italy, but the combination of all these subgenres serves to distinguish the film as unique cinematic poetry, encapsulating the feelings of young love and young heartbreak.