One thing we read was a quote that I’ve known for years, and loved, from Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, who said that we can only understand our life backwards, but we’re forced to live it forwards. And I think that’s the confusion we all feel, is that we always learn too late. We go through things that are completely inexplicable and mysterious. And then years later, we realize.

She suddenly starts realizing how she is building an experience of relationships, and how all the paradoxes that you see specifically in the film show how she is trapped in one role in one relationship then takes on a completely different role in the next one—maybe even the role of the other partner in the first one. You’re on different sides of the fence in certain discussions, going forward. And you become a richer person through those sometimes painful experiences, a more whole person and perhaps a more accepting person in terms of accepting others.

There’s a great book by a British writer and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, which came out a few years ago, called Missing Out, where he says that, in the therapy room, what he experiences with people a lot is that he realizes that people live their whole life with this big, imagined part of themselves. All the what ifs that never happened. That relationship they think they might or should have had or would have in the future, if they only broke away from the relationship they were in. Or that job they’re going to start doing one day. And it actually becomes your self-perception and your feeling of identity. And, suddenly, life has passed. And that whole imagined self was also a part of who you were, but it was unspoken or unlived. And this is life.

I thought that was an interesting notion, the negotiation between the imagined self and the real self that plays out in time. That’s a big theme that I can make several films about, but this one was specifically through the character of Julie.

I don’t really believe that we can see ourselves fully. So much is subconscious. There’s so much history and so much memory that we can’t access.

That’s the feedback we’re getting from people who’ve watched the film, is that it’s okay to be ambivalent and feel that things are not in full order. If we can add a consoling notion around that, I think we’re good.

The idea in psychology of “good enough” can be fine. Maybe there is a life where not everyone becomes that unique snowflake that we are all raised to believe that we have to be to be anything. Maybe there is a place of acceptance in a simpler life, a less turbulent life, without feeling that we’re losing the progressivity of thought or humanity in our own personal life. Maybe the exterior appearance of that success is less interesting than fulfilling it on a more intimate level, in one’s personal life. I don’t know. These are big questions, and I don’t want to come off as pretentious. But I think you’re touching on something that we indirectly have talked about a lot in making this film. Julie is this slightly idealized child from early on. She has good grades. She got into medical school. And she feels this pressure to do something really special. That is complicated for her.

what if COVID allowed people to take that step that they had been yearning for, sometimes, to say that the meritocratic society that we live in—particularly in America but also in Norway, to a large extent—where we are feeling that we are so responsible for fulfilling the utmost potential of ourselves, and we carry that alone, that that is a quite a stifling notion for a lot of people? That’s quite a heavy burden to carry: to feel that if you don’t do the greatest thing you could do, you’re a loser.

There wasn't that kind of clarity from a musical position on Queer. He threw out lots of different things that were kind of riddles to solve, but, eventually, what we decided on was leaning into Burroughs and the idea of the cut-up technique and using samplers. It felt like an organic way to tell the story musically.

Reznor: I just found some notes from a call with Luca. So I'll read [them to] you. Here was our directions: "Love could feel like dread—Stockhausen. Lee towards lover—engulfing, overwhelming, an uncompromising approach. He's a broken, lonely man—unknown reciprocation, unsure throughout, but still beautiful. I like the scale of an orchestra—bipolar. Make the score bipolar. Burroughs was like this, from Old America, but contemporary—the score should be like that. Maybe electronic element—Ayahuasca." Okay—go write a score.

the original cut was significantly longer, at least an hour longer than what's in theaters now. And a lot of what was taken out was a more surreal element that was exciting and alters the way the film feels quite a bit. When a lot of that got removed, it was hard for us to understand what the film became, because it shifted the tone of it quite a bit in certain ways.

It became disorienting at times to also quantify the impact the whole film has. You know what I mean? We're watching three-minute chunks, a week of this three-minute and then a week of that seven-minute segment, assuming it sits atop the scaffolding that got us there and leads to what's happening.

sometimes, when you start taking those pieces out, it becomes harder to understand. What you're working on is now affected because it doesn't have that stuff you know is there because you watched it, but it's not there. That's the part of filmmaking that I find tricky. We've experienced it with [David] Fincher as well on some things. To be able, as a director, to remain objective with that many moving parts, that's what feels... When people have said, “Do you ever think about directing?”—it's like, I've thought about how I know I couldn't do it. I thought about, “Well, I'd like to do it,” but it's like, the ability to be able to remain objective about so many things, that feels daunting to me. And as composers we feel like we're able to microscope in to get really close up on things.

“Maybe another portal is his open chest. He just goes, ‘Please come in, come in,’” says Craig. “It applies to art. It applies to everything. Letting one’s self go. If you don’t do it, how can you ever know? That tragedy of not doing that is greater than the embarrassment of doing it. We’re defined by those moments in our lives.”

“I’m really interested in the repression of others,” Guadagnino says. “I realize many, many times I go back to the theme. The idea of being so vulnerable and ready to be. He doesn’t have a sense of pride or a protection of social codes.”

Starkey, the 31-year-old “Outer Banks” actor, was met with the very different challenge of playing a character with few words on the page and a cryptic presence. He theorized that Allerton is in retreat because it’s “as if you’ve lived your whole life and never seen your own reflection, and someone puts a mirror in front of your face.” “A question I asked early on was: Is Allerton aware of the game that he’s playing? Is he aware that he may have some power over Lee, and does he like it?” says Starkey. “Luca’s answer to that was: ‘That’s a very good question.’”

When kids are growing up, their moral compass isn’t formed yet. So there’s a dark side to it where you’re not really allowed to make mistakes. You’re supposed to make mistakes growing up and then learn from them. It changes who you are and helps you become a better person. But now, through everything being recorded, your mistakes can be immortalized for people to see, and kids aren’t allowed to make mistakes because that stuff can be brought up to tear them down later. So it’s a strange world that we’re living in now, and we won’t really know the effects of it till down the line.

I’d be in front of camera, and Danny would be behind. Danny would do a rough cut, I’d do a final cut, and then I’d do sound effects and music. And Danny would focus on VFX and color. So, during the process, we were more involved with those departments. I did a lot more with the sound and the music, and Danny did a lot more with the color. But on set, Danny would be the main voice communicating. If I had something like a direction that differed from what he was saying, I’d speak with him first and then we’d do a take like that. It was good having two of us, especially with scenes that had a lot more people. Danny could focus on the main, and I could look at the peripheral stuff. I feel like having a co-director is a bit of a cheat code. I can’t imagine doing it all by myself.