Timothée Chalamet, who was a favorite to win the Oscar in this year’s award show, lost. In addition to the loss, he had infuriated many weeks before the ceremony with his comments.
Those remarks were about the opera and ballet, which instantly drew the musical community to hit back.
Now, Luca Guadagnino, the director who first launched the actor in Call Me By Your Name, has spoken out on his behalf, months after the full-blown culture war.
I am not on social media and don’t understand how one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic,” he tells La Stampa, an Italian daily.
The filmmaker continues, “Maybe Timothée could have spared himself. But he’s young, smart, and sensitive, and he fears that cinema could become marginal. And that’s exactly why every form of imagination should be nurtured. We must unite the arts, not separate them.”
Chalamet’s remarks come from a discussion at the University of Texas about preserving the cinema, where he said, “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this anymore.'”
