A sun-dappled Italian fable, ‘La Chimera’ feels like the discovery of a new language

Carlos Aguilar March 29, 2024

Time increases the monetary value of certain objects we leave behind

after we are gone

. What was once brand new

for us

the years turn into antiques

. That an item survived intact for so long sometimes makes it more desirable for those discovering it in the here and now.Such is the fate of

like the Etruscan artifacts exhumed after being hidden for millennia in Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, a film of incandescent beauty, both

aesthetically and in

its thematic liminality

and on a strictly aesthetic sense

.

As withLike in

Rohrwachers previous movies

strokes of genius,

, there is an exquisite blurring between the tangible and the ethereal, the urban and the pastoral, life and death,

the

past and

the

present

all of it o

verlap

ping

with the same

ease

as the

blurred

hues of a twilight sky.

But

the Rohrwacher, an

Oscar-nominated

Italian

writer-director

,

who lives

in Italymostly

disconnected from the spotlight of the entertainment industry

and who crafts tales of grounded whimsy

, cares little for the price attached to these ancient worldly possessions. Their significance, she suggests, lies in what they represented for those who first created them:

a fervent belief in a glorious afterlife, and how that resonates with our own mortal yearning for meaning.

For Arthur (Josh O’Connor of The Crown), a

wayward

British arch

a

eologist living in 1980s small-town Tuscany,

its the vision of a red string that a dream

anchors him to his own elusive

sense of purposechimera

: Beniamina (Yile Vianello), the woman he loved and lost.

With But most of the time, he’s plying an illegal trade, using hisan

otherworldly talent

for

to find

ingthe

sites where long-buried treasures await

,

. Arthur

, a prophet-like figure,

commands a band of

B

bohemian misfits making a meager living as

tombaroli

or grave-robbers. Their ill-obtained

invaluable “grave goods”

will grace museums or private collections.

Speaking Italian for most of his performance, O’Connor transmits an enigmatic,

sorrowful

melancholy.

Not unlike the pieces Arthur and his mates illicitly unearth, his sorrow is not for human eyes.Akin to Like

a wounded boy desperate for an embrace but who refuses to verbalize his need, he wanders penniless through

this

town, a handsome flesh-and-blood specter

in a dirty white suit.

Still, theres a lifeline for him in

the industrious

Italia (radiant Brazilian actress Carol Duarte), a young mother of two working for

elderly songstress and

Beniaminas mother Flora (

screen legend the legendary

Isabella Rossellini). While Arthur

has his head metaphorically tucked underground with his mind remains

haunted by sundrenched

dreams visions of Beniamina

, Italia is occupied with whats in front of her, namely the search for a place to call home

,

and a chance at a future. Even

after they becomeif physically together and

romantically involved, they each inhabit opposite planes of existence.

Rohrwacher carries out her soulful excavation with

a sense offormally

playful perspective. Halfway through the

fable film

, a troubadour sings a ballad recounting the misadventures of the poor thieves

we’ve been watching,and

pointing out Arthurs adrift state. The tune plays over a montage that features cops-and-robbers chases in sped-up frames for comic effect an amusing wink to bygone cinema tricks.

Masterfully, she weaves in But these

fanciful flourishes

never readthat avoid reading

superfluous

ly

,

and

instead reaffirm

ing Rohrwacher

s comfortable straddling of the real and the fantastical.

The gifted French cinematographer Hlne Louvart

(“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”)

alternates aspect ratios and film stocks to

materially

accentuate the in

-betweenterstitial

quality of La Chimera.

If Rohrwachers 2018 Happy as Lazzaro, also shot by Louvart, exhibited an unmissable distinction between its separate narrative parts, here timeliness reigns.Yet t T

he earthy texture of the movies craft, which could fool us into thinking its being projected from a once-believed lost and recently found old reel, aligns with the

humble

ethos of a storyteller

perpetually

concerned with

the

people who w

on’till not

be remembered in the history books, but who nonetheless lived ferociously.

By design,

the

O’Connor never entirely blends in with Rohrwachers other

salt of the

characters.

Just like Lazzaros utter naivete in a jaded world is what set him apart, its

Arthurs foreign point of view

is partly

what makes him

a

tragic,

protagonist who

garner

ings

puzzled looks from locals. Its not only that he came from another country in Europe, but that he has accepted citizenship in the land of the dead, so much so that the dead speak to him in

hisdreams nightmares

, asking after their stolen goods, the only proof that they existed. Its not difficult to empathize with their worry. Isnt everything we do an attempt to assert that we matter?

Rohrwacher stays focused on the people who lend property its real significance

.Its people who give property its actual relevance as an extension of who we are, who we were, who we will be

. An empty train station

can

become

s

a refuge for the homeless in Italias caring hands, while wealthy Floras mansion falls in disrepair as her daughters sack its contents with the intention of putting th

eir

matriarch in a nursing home. By the time Arthur becomes a buried relic himself,

trapped in his own direct passage to the hereafter,

his only escape is a ray of sun and the slippery red string representing Beniamina that brings the story full circle.

The m M

ournful

ly yet

exuberant

,

La Chimera is a towering work of art presented with the unassuming

invitingness invitation

of a

warmingbright summer

morning

where tender sunrays caress ones skin

.

Stealthily, however, it holds the power of a spellbinding elixir that In a way, it

allows the viewer to traverse time and space

,

one

strikingly

luminous image at a time. A staunch humanist, Rohrwacher makes movies

that are

primed for immor

t

ality. If her latest is somehow discovered

a thousand 2,000

years from now

somewhere

among the ruins of what we

once

call

ed

civilization

today or in a capsule floating through space

, it would be an astoundingly flattering portrait of us.