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Director Alice Rohrwacher
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sisters Alice and Alba Rohrwacher
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Josh O'Connor on the set with the director
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Josh O'Connor, Alice Rohrwacher, and Isabella Rossellini
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Isabella Rossellini with the Rohrwacher sisters
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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.
