2024 Top Ten List #5 La Chimera

Director Alice Rohrwacher

sisters Alice and Alba Rohrwacher

Josh O'Connor on the set with the director

Josh O'Connor, Alice Rohrwacher, and Isabella Rossellini

Isabella Rossellini with the Rohrwacher sisters

LA CHIMERA             A                                                                                                            Italy  France Switzerland  (130 mi)  2023

In the place where I grew up, I often heard stories of secret discoveries, clandestine excavations and mysterious adventures.  It was enough to stay in a bar late at night, or stop in a patch of countryside to hear about that guy who had uncovered a Villanovan tomb with his tractor, or the other guy who digging at night near the necropolis had found such a long gold necklace to be able to surround a house, and yet another who had become rich in Switzerland by selling an Etruscan vase that he had found in the garden.  Stories of skeletons and ghosts, of escapes and darkness.  The life around me was made up of several parts: a sunny, contemporary, busy one, and a nocturnal, mysterious, secret one.  There were many layers, and we all experienced them: it was enough to dig a few centimeters into the earth and a fragment of an artefact, made by other hands, appeared among the stones.  How long had he been looking at me?  It was enough to go to the nearby stables and cellars to realize that those places had been something else, they were perhaps Etruscan tombs, refuges from other times, sacred places.  This closeness between the sacred and the profane, between death and life, which characterized all the years of my growth, has always fascinated me and given my gaze a measure.  This is why I decided to finally make a film that tells this layered plot, this relationship between two worlds, probably the last piece of a triptych on a territory that questions a central question: what to do with the past?  Death is something that our society forces us to face individually, at most within a family.  Instead, comparing myself with the past, I saw an idea of ​​death integrated into life and the community.

—Alice Rohrwacher

A wondrous film that defies description, seemingly frozen in time, full of nostalgia and love for beauty in all its forms, blurring the boundaries of the ancient and the modern until they are almost indistinguishable, finally settling on a state of mind where this film seems to exist, somewhere between the dreamy and the visionary, as one senses things are not altogether real, yet somewhat magical, while also lingering in the poverty of everyday existence of rural Italy, much like the lyrical films of Pietro Marcello, who is credited as one of the inspirations behind this film, collecting testimonies with the director when initially planning a documentary, while also working together on the collective film FUTURA (2021).  Who would think a film about grave robbers could have so much impact?  Dressed in sensual imagery, the film constantly surprises, offering intrigue in a profound, sometimes incomprehensible way, feeling like an ode to Tuscany, a land filled with untold secrets, the stomping grounds of the Taviani brothers, makers of PADRE PADRONE (1977), a pastoral homage to Italian heritage that won the Cannes Palme D’Or (1st prize), the almost never seen IL PRATO (1979), which launched the career of Isabella Rossellini, while the magical THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (1982) may arguably be their best work.  Rohrwacher, who studied literature and philosophy at the University of Turin, has increasingly deployed myth and allegory to tell her stories.  Opening in a dream sequence, one of several recurring sequences that we see, two young lovers are frolicking with a kind of unbridled joy, bathed in a sea of light, as she whispers to him “Have you noticed the sun is following us?”  This is our introduction to Beniamina, a beautiful blond woman with a tattoo of the sun on her shoulder played by Yile Yara Vianello, the star of Rohrwacher’s first feature CORPO CELESTE (2011), whose dreamlike presence is summoned by Arthur (Josh O’Connor), a somewhat sullen character known as the Englishman, or “the foreigner,” a character shrouded in mystery, but slowly a life story unfolds around him, as he’s recently released from prison on unspecified charges, traveling by train to return back to his home, forever haunted by her ghostly memory, as she seems to have drawn him to Tuscany.  They reflect the ill-fated mythological fable of Orpheus and Eurydice (Orpheus and Eurydice: A Tragic Love Story), young and in love, seemingly inseparable, where she is eventually trapped behind in the underworld, forever destined to roam in the darkness.  A tale of love, loss, and the innocence of youth, Rohrwacher is one of the best new talents working today, employing an international cast, where there is always an exploration of the feminine dimension, with several different women intersecting Arthur’s existential path, adding undoubted weight, yet her warm humanism is a direct descendant of the neorealism of Fellini and De Sica, infusing her films with an element of magical realism, subverting all expectations with such a disjointed narrative.  This is the last part of her trilogy examining the Italian identity through a relationship with its past, following The Wonders (Le meraviglie) (2014) and Happy As Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice) (2018), adding an unmistakable flourish of cinematic poetry that is nothing less than enticing, cloaked in a patina of melancholy, beautifully shot in a combination of Super 16mm, 16mm, and 35mm by French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, who has worked with this director since the beginning, also known for her work with Agnès Varda in The Beaches of Agnès (Les plages d'Agnès) (2008), also Eliza Hittman in Beach Rats (2017) and 2020 Top Ten List #5 Never Rarely Sometimes Always.  Once back home, Arthur’s first order of business is paying a visit to Beniamina’s mother Flora (none other than Isabella Rossellini in a wheelchair), the closest thing he has to a motherly figure, a former opera singer and aging aristocrat whose dilapidated mansion has seen better days, with water dripping from the ceiling, who now supports herself as a music teacher, where her connection to the ethereal comes from her unique understanding of sacred music, yet she’s surrounded by the overlapping dialogue of vulture-like daughters and granddaughters who can’t wait to sell her home and push her into a nursing facility so they won’t have to care for her any longer.  But they keep up the pretense of honor and respectability, paying her visible respect in her presence, while undermining her every chance they get.  This acidic comment on the unscrupulous society the world has become offers insight into the world of today, as people who desecrate the graves of the dead are only thinking about themselves in the present, with little understanding or connection to their historical past.  Rohrwacher is so good at depicting the life of the peasants of her region, told with the poetic power of her vision, as it’s all about an interplay and interactive dialogue with history.  To the Etruscans, for instance, birds in flight represent our destiny, while in a surreal moment we find the protagonist chatting with dead souls in search of their looted relics. 

Through Flora Arthur meets Italia, Carol Duarte, a Brazilian actress previously seen playing Euridice in the barely seen Karim Aïnouz film 2019 Top Ten List #4 Invisible Life (A Vida Invisível), bringing to the screen an imposing spirit with great tenacity, where their relationship is soon cloaked in romance.  She appears to be a tone-deaf music student who pays for her services by being Flora’s attentive live-in servant who is despised and ridiculed by Flora’s daughters, who dismissively order her around, yet her strength of will stands out as she perseveres while secretly housing two small children, showing surprising resiliency, with Arthur taking notice, as she offers him a crash course in Italian that comically resembles a gestural sign language.  One of the early scenes of note is Flora emphasizing to Italia the depth of feeling needed when having a confessional conversation with God in the Mozart aria, Mozart: "Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio" - Sabine Devieilhe - YouTube (7:07), one of the more difficult arias Mozart ever wrote, with the lyric, “Let me explain, oh God, what my grief is!  But fate has condemned me to weep and stay silent.”  The setting is a period piece from an impoverished Tuscany in the 1980’s, with its bucolic landscapes and undisturbed natural beauty, as Arthur returns to the small town of Riparbella on the Tyrrhenian Sea, reluctantly rejoining his small band of grave robbers known as the “tambaroli,” who pretend to make their living as farmers and entertainers, but instead pilfer the area’s sacred tombs of the ancient Etruscans searching for artifacts and ornaments to sell on the black market, hoping to one day strike it rich.  Other than Arthur, they are not archeologists or historians, but are simply poor.  Predecessors to the Romans, the Etruscans (The Etruscans, an introduction) dedicated their art and their craftsmanship to the world of the dead, while this ragtag group of jesters and musicians are like a vagabond theater troupe, reminiscent of the circus people in Fellini’s LA STRADA (1954), especially their wildly enthusiastic Epiphany Day parade, La Chimera Film Clip | OIFF 2023 - YouTube (1:45).  It turns out they actually left Arthur behind earlier, which accounts for his arrest, but they need him due to his inexplicable talent in using a dowser to divine the precise location of these buried treasures, which aren’t just graves, but shrines and relics left in underground caves and tunnels.  In the small town where Rohrwacher grew up, she recalls these local thieves would come into local bars and café’s to brag about their adventures, providing the inspiration for the film, drawing parallels to Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953) and Il Bidone (1955), yet rather than drenched in the neorealism of the 1950’s, the director continually offers startling new revelations in this modern era fable, creating a positively enchanting film, which is like a road movie with its many twists and diversions, taking us places where we have never been.  During these misadventures, Arthur continues to be drawn back to thoughts of Beniamina, a mystery woman who is either absent or has disappeared, perhaps even dead, with no real explanation of what happened, feeling more like a mirage (thus the title), which is how the entire film plays out, as we largely sense rather than understand the unspoken mysteries that are all around us.  The film does not have one overarching message, but can be thought of in infinite ways, developing so many different themes, like love, friendship, property law, traditions, the art trade, how to deal with the past, mourning and oppression, and finally, the role of myths, dreams, and the supernatural in our daily lives.  People have different ways of relating to the past, those who plunder and ignore history, or those who instead try to give new life to forgotten places.  To the tambaroli of the 70’s and 80’s, they believe the treasures of the Etruscans are a legacy bequeathed to them, where that desecration is emptied of its meaning.  They sell their goods to an unseen art dealer known as Spartaco, who operates at cargo ports with all the necessary equipment, like excavators, construction cranes, and forklifts, eventually finding their way to museums for public display, apparently with no questions asked, where history is literally for sale when buyers are asked to “estimate the inestimable.”  The group is amusingly contacted by one of Spartaco’s sexually provocative employees acting as a liaison, Melodie, played by Lou Roy-Lecollinet, so mesmerizing in Arnaud Desplechin’s 2015 Top Ten Films #7 My Golden Days (Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse), who ultimately betrays them.  Punctuated by excerpts from Monteverdi’s Orpheus, Monteverdi: L'Orfeo - Prologue - YouTube (7:07), which adds weight and dimension, much of this feels like a pirate adventure, eloquently combining archaeological scenarios with unmissable views of building and industrial construction sites, exposing a world on the verge of modernization, yet there is also an accompanying love story in both the present and the past that adds a deeper layer of uncovered mystery, where the past is literally calling out to us to pay attention, but these messages are largely ignored.     

The beauty of the film is how it so seamlessly interweaves myths and legend as well as larger ideas about the world of the living and the world of the dead, with suggestions that the old ways never die, all coming together in the delicate poetry of an inexplicable romance, using eclectic musical styles ranging from baroque, opera, classical, to modern electronic, where the music fits well with the content, but it’s nothing short of brilliant when a troubadour breaks out into song, a heroic ballad of Arthur and his band, as the story we are watching about the tambaroli suddenly plays out like musical theater, or an outdoor puppet show, as the sound of a triangle introduces a singer on guitar who casts a bewitching spell, bringing extreme passion into their exploits.  Sometimes Rohrwacher will speed up or slow down footage for comedic or dramatic impact, have characters speak directly to the camera, while other times she’ll literally flip the image on its head.  Things seem to randomly occur, paying little regard to any traditional plot structure, yet the director feels more focused here, accumulating more complexity and depth by creating a dialogue with the past, discovering lost relics that were only meant to be experienced by the dead, so eloquently described by the refrain, “You were not meant for human eyes.”  That is such a powerful Etruscan sentiment, where the world of art is an invaluable human resource, yet the flipside is the greedy commerce aspect, with little connection to the very soul of art, or the language it speaks, yet this film connects us in so many mysterious ways.  With the director examining Italy’s postwar transition to modernity, one must ask why these treasures remained untouched for two thousand years.  When did people stop seeing their history through art, or lose their faith in the sacred, instead viewing objects only for their economic value?  As Arthur begins to question the morality of his actions, the film asks us to change our own viewpoint and look below the surface, much like Marcello’s Scarlet (L’envol) (2022), as poetry should be the tool that frees characters from the weight of history.  The ensemble acting is a highlight, featuring emphatically strong performances, where the presence of Isabella Rossellini is simply a treat for the eyes, yet Rohrwacher introduces her older sister Alba in such a compelling way, as she comes to represent the heart of dishonesty in contemporary culture, becoming a kaleidoscopic mosaic that is so beautifully woven together.  This film was surprisingly overlooked at the Cannes Film Festival, premiering on the final day, winning no awards, yet may be the director’s crowning achievement, potentially with a larger impact than all the other awarded films, yet fewer will see it, as it strives for the heights of such transcendent works as Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV (1966), a perfect blend of history and art, though this feels a bit like Icarus flying too close to the sun, getting scorched by his own ambition.  The cradle of ancient civilization comes alive in this film, yet questions its place in the postwar twentieth century, as materialist profiteering stands in stark contrast to spirituality and religion.  Today there is a market for ancient works of art, but largely through illicit trafficking, in particular archaeological sites that have been neglected or abandoned.  In Italy, artifacts of historic value belong to the state, yet art trafficking is a larger problem than drug trafficking, with much less risk, though harder to prosecute, as the wheels of justice spin very slowly.  Arthur is different from the rest of them in that he belongs neither to the territory nor to the gang.  For him, there’s always some trepidation about what lies underneath.  What he seeks is neither profit, money, or adventure, but something else altogether, driven by a deeper need, as the past and present, reality and myth, all blur in Arthur’s quest for the unobtainable, becoming a guardian of art in pursuit of something he has lost, like opening a door to the afterlife, as myths reveal a profound truth, that humankind is in search of its soul that was lost long ago.  The exquisite sympathy of the final moments is profoundly moving, as the meandering structure all comes together in a cohesive whole, overflowing with symbolism, where the seemingly random side journeys all make sense, offering unexpected implications, creating a powerful yet carefully choreographed accumulative effect that is unforgettable, growing richer for the meticulous detail, but also the force of its message.  It’s not just death, but an idea of what lies beyond that is fully integrated into life, becoming a sacred place, like the memory of a lost love, where there are so many layers to this film, and so much joy, challenging viewers into the cavernous regions of our own souls, reminding us what a touching and violent thing humanity is, guided by a careful hand at the helm, as Rohrwacher may stand alone in contemporary European cinema, lovingly conveying the complexity of character while also knowing how to evoke a deeper meaning of the everyday.  This is a film that flies in the face of so-called perfection, inspired by a road not taken, where it’s the flaws and imperfections, and the jagged edges that make it so compellingly human. 

Happy As Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice)

Director Alice Rohrwacher

Director Alice Rohrwacher flanked by actor Adriano Tardioli (left) and Luca Chikovani (right)

Sisters Alice Rohrwacher (left) and Alba Rohrwacher (right)

Actress Alba Rohrwacher

Writer/Director Alice Rohrwacher winning Best Screenplay award at Cannes

HAPPY AS LAZZARO (Lazzaro Felice)                             B                    

Italy  France  Switzerland  Germany  (128 mi)  2018  d:  Alice Rohrwacher    Tempesta [Italy]

Unlike her earlier work, The Wonders (Le meraviglie) (2014), which felt so light and effortless (both shot on 16mm by French cinematographer Hélène Louvart), this is stridently manipulative and unappealing, heavily steeped in religious allegory, becoming an overly exploitive film about the evils of exploiting the poor, that becomes, sad to say, wrenchingly overdramatic and misguided, using magical realism not to suggest wonder or delight (though some apparently buy into it), but to suggest that human behavior is the same no matter what time period, as the rich will still exploit the poor in any historical era.  While it may be well intentioned, it’s a major disappointment considering how well acclaimed this film has become, winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes, though Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018), which won the Palme d’Or as Best Film, has a particularly gifted screenplay, which uniquely plays into that film’s appeal, while the screenplay here is overwritten and overwrought.  That was the beauty of her earlier film, as it felt so natural and authentic, actually creating a bit of magic and wonder, but this one’s hard to take and even harder to believe, suggesting, to put it simply, that we’re all saps as we’re so easily duped by false narratives about the power of the rich, somehow believing their lives are better because they have money and status, but really what separates the rich from the poor is that the rich have no moral conscience, believing it is their birthright to be rich, so lying and exploiting the poor is part of their heritage.  It’s what they do for a living.  With that in mind, despite the effort to indict current social ills, this is a terribly difficult film to appreciate, as inevitably the poor keep feeding into the cynical instincts of the rich, allowing themselves to continually believe the lie, even as they sink deeper into poverty.  Is there no hope?  Not in this film, which felt darker and more fatalistic than any Béla Tarr film.  Yet this was the choice for Best Film at the Chicago Film Festival, which has never been particularly adventurous in their awards, rarely picking the best films, which are often determined by which way the wind blows at the time, choosing subject matter that feels appropriate to the times, though this is likely true of all festival juries, including Cannes, which remains a hot subject for viewers and critics alike to scrutinize at length.  A word about the Rohrwacher sisters, however, as they continue to be an absolute delight, with one sister, Alice, as the writer/director, while the other sister, Alba, always appears in a leading role.  They work so well together that their underlying spirit is always on the same wavelength, literally exuding commonality (in terms of themes and beliefs) and camaraderie (a loving generosity), as they feel inseparable.  Usually it’s a joy to watch them work together, where everyday kindness can be elevated to supreme heights, offering a sense of triumph over the prevailing moral hypocrisy, and when Alba is onscreen there’s always a bit of magic in the air, elevating the material, and this is no different, but the screenplay that is being lauded actually constricts and suffocates the life right out of this film, where at least part of the problem is there are simply no appealing characters.      

Bearing a strange similarity to Visconti’s THE LEOPARD (1963), but without all the extravagance, though striving throughout to be an Olmi film, like THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS (1978), among the best representations onscreen of a peasant class working the fields, but lacking the gravity and authenticity of his films, not to mention his command as a director, but this is, at heart, a film about the poor, as the camera continually follows them around, making them the focus of the film.  Told in two parts, the past and the present, many of the characters appear in both sections, where the effects of time have revealed unalterable changes in their lives, except one selfless Christ-like figure, viewed as a saint, Lazzaro (Adriano Tardioli), a mysterious creature viewed as a simpleton, exploited by others and routinely denigrated, who is exactly the same in both time periods, not aging a bit, like Lazarus, rising from the dead, where he becomes the mirror of the evolving world around him, reflecting back to viewers an unfiltered understanding, as there isn’t an ounce of cynicism in his character, a good man who is incapable of lying or doing anything bad, as he is pure innocence at heart.  People seem to swoon over this character’s presence, offering deep hidden meanings, but my guess is they are projecting their own religious values and sentiments, making him something astonishingly new, yet, haven’t goodness and innocence been around since the dawn of time?  Are those characteristics remarkable enough, however, to move resolute power?  Do they have the power to end the cynicism that reeks in authoritarian regimes or heavy-handed patriarchal societies that seem to enjoy wiping out any thought of social justice?  In truth, it would get trounced by abusive power.  End of story.  So why all the hoopla about this film?  Part of it is Alice Rohrwacher herself, a symbol of optimism and moral integrity, where perhaps she is being rewarded for having the audacity to challenge these age-old perceptions of social inequities, the same ones ascribed by Olmi and others, like Bertolucci’s epic 1976 drama entitled 1900, where the lower class always gets the short end of the stick.  While people may be gushing at her use of magical realism, which can be extremely effective and influential, both in cinema and literary circles, but the pertinent question to be asked is whether it works here?  And my contention is a resounding no.  Especially the way this film ends, with no ambiguity whatsoever.  It matches Dostoyevsky’s essay on The Grand Inquisitor, articulated in The Brothers Karamazov, suggesting that if Christ returned today, in today’s cynical world, that he would not be recognized, that organized religion would immediately disavow his importance and reject his message, as they’re insistent upon teaching their version of the Christ parable, with a supreme authority that remains unchallenged.  They’re simply not capable of adjusting to a new living Christ.  

In the opening moments, set in an Italian countryside that feels timeless, Lazzaro is utterly indistinguishable from the others, blending into the whole with complete anonymity, where these peasant sharecropping farmers are so poor that they have to move their lone lightbulb from room to room, forced to endure backbreaking work and simple pleasures, as they work in the tobacco fields all day.  Lazzaro is simply one of them, used to being asked to do the heavy work, or the jobs no one else wants to do, which he does willingly, without complaint, as he’s a man of humble origins, as are they all, born into their predicament.  Yet the opening scene is a musical confession of love, viewed as a special occasion, getting everyone’s spirits raised, as all get a sip of wine in a joyous tribute to the happy couple that plans to get married and leave the farm, earning a better life in the city.  But before a single day passes, their spirits are dashed by the reality of the situation, as they have to ask permission of the Marchesa, the tobacco baroness (Nicoletta Braschi, wife of Roberto Benigni) who owns Inviolata, the place where they work, as they all work for her, and no one leaves until she says so, with people scoffing at the idea that will ever happen, so get used to the idea that she owns these workers, whose services belong to her, just like a slave plantation.  When her chosen henchman, Nicola (Natalino Balasso), gathers them all around and tallies up the wages, each one of them is consumed by debts owed, making it impossible for any of them to leave, as the system is rooted in thievery, where they live in a collective purgatory of generational debt.  As the landowner, the detestable baroness lives in a big manor, surrounded by plenty of servants, whose impulse is to exploit the workers at every opportunity (believing they in turn will exploit others), as otherwise they’d show no respect, whose mantra is “Human beings are beasts.”  Along with her is a bored and perpetually unhappy teenage son, Tancredi (Luca Chikovani), a self-centered lout who sulks around the house all day smoking cigarettes, having bleached his hair blond, showing signs of rebellion and dissension in the ranks, but that’s only to get some attention from his unloving mother, who has little use for him.  So he runs off in the fields and joins Lazzaro, pulling him away from work, sarcastically calling him a half-brother, offering him a slingshot as a gift, but then uses him in a secret plan to report his own kidnapping, hoping to extort money from his own mother.  But she’s too sly to fall for it, leaving him high and dry, exactly where he was in the first place, an unloved son with a repugnant mother.  But Lazzaro reveals a secret hiding place up on the mountain, away from view, which becomes Tancredi’s new residence, remaining out of sight from the others.

Tancredi’s plot inadvertently brings in the police, which exposes the Marchesa as a fraud, an aristocrat who’s been keeping her workers as unpaid slaves, ignoring the fact the old feudal shareholding system was declared illegal years ago (inspired by a real-life incident, as sharecropping was outlawed in 1980), so the police arrive and relocate the bewildered and dumbfounded workers to a nearby city, but then abandons them, literally dumping them in a parallel universe of urban sprawl that is completely unfamiliar to them, but more recognizable to viewers as the modern age, where many of them end up homeless and destitute, living by the railroad tracks, scrounging for what little food they can get, mostly surviving by petty crimes.  It’s only here that Alba Rohrwacher becomes recognizable as Antonia (a former maid of the Marchesa’s played by a different actress), joining forces with Ultimo (Sergi López), the leader of this pack of misfits, where they are unabashed street hustlers, pulling any scam they can.  In this strange new universe, Lazzaro arrives, exactly as he was, not having aged a bit, while the others are clearly older, but only by a decade or so.  Antonia is at first dumbstruck, not knowing what to do, but she brings him along on all their heists, though openly hides their intentions, so he doesn’t grow suspicious, where he becomes one of the pack, exactly as he was before, quickly surprising them all in his own natural abilities to chip in what he can to help.  It’s a bit amusing, if not absurd, as Lazzaro remains completely innocent, incapable of understanding what they’re really up to, where he becomes their moral conscience, as least for Antonia, who values his kindness and good will, not wanting to acknowledge her own failings.  Incredibly, Lazzaro runs into an older Tancredi (Tommaso Ragno), more humbled now that he’s served some jail time, who’s welcomed with friendship back to the gang, some of whom he recognizes from before, making this awkward and bizarre, as he doesn’t understand Lazzaro’s strange and mysterious transformation either.  However his sarcastic nature is still intact, loving to play jokes on people, still conveying an air of aristocracy, as if the class system is still in effect, so they see him as he was before, even as he may be as downtrodden as they are, but he hides it well.  It’s inconceivable for Lazzaro to view Tancredi as connected with anything villainous, picking up right where they left off, as half-brothers, only seeing the best in everyone, where wickedness simply doesn’t exist.  This gets a bit silly and uncomfortable after a while, as truth is continually overlooked, cloaked in the flowery language of the aristocracy, which is cynical at heart, using lies and deception, pretending friendly motives when all they want is to take as much as they can get, and once they have no further use for you, you’re expendable.  The lack of any real human connection here slowly goes off the rails, as a certain ugliness creeps in, as it inevitably does, especially for the unfortunate.  While they may all yearn for freedom, none of them find it, as in the end they’re all exploited, perhaps even worse than they were at the beginning when they felt like a family, as there seems to be more distance between people and less understanding, less empathy, and less love.  That is, unless you believe in the unbelievable, which humans happen to call faith.