Alice Rohrwacher’s sublime La Chimera is just now (in September 2024) finishing up an incredible six month run at the IFC Center in New York – something that is certainly worthy of celebration. This little independent Italian film has certainly resonated with audiences, and it’s easy to understand why. Josh O’Connor’s central performance as the enigmatic Arthur is certainly a big factor – and Rohrwacher’s film benefited from his star rating being pole-vaulted by Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, which was released around the same time. But Rohrwacher and her collaborators’ gossamer-light touch with the script also deserves plaudits, as does cinematographer Helene Louvart’s unique approach to using both 16 and 35mm Kodak film, with shifting aspect ratios which sometimes reveal the edge of the frame.
O’Connor’s Englishman Arthur roams the countryside of Lazio and Tuscany with his band of tombaroli – tomb raiders who couldn’t be further from Lara Croft. Arthur has a gift for dowsing, implying that he has a spiritual or divine connection to buried treasures, or perhaps he is drawn to the dead. He clearly feels some guilt about his gift, however, and as the story goes on, his conscience begins to weigh him down – invading his dreams.
Arthur is far more serious than the rest of the traveling band, who like to drink and dance, don costumes for festivals and have no qualms about raiding graves of their mementos and trinkets, which clearly held significance for those they are buried with. Arthur has almost mythical status amongst the locals, who make a folk song about him and hang tapestries depicting him – Arthur will become part of the fables and legends of this area, just one more artifact that will later be exhumed.
One of the key themes of La Chimera is communication – Arthur is not fluent in Italian, but knows enough to get by. He meets a young woman, Italia (Carol Duarte) at the home of Flora (Isabella Rossellini) – the mother of Arthur’s lost love, Beniamina. Italia often communicates with Arthur using sign language, which she teaches to him. And of course, the dead are communicating with Arthur, even though it will be to their detriment. Another theme is water and reflections – there are many beautiful upside-down shots of Arthur, reflected in pools or simply to disorient us and keep us at a distance from this character, who we never fully get to know. His motivations are never revealed, he doesn’t seem to value money, but something is inevitably drawing him to these Etruscan tombs full of wonder. Water is a part of Arthur’s divination, and the sea is the setting of several key scenes. The tomb where the tombaroli make their most sensational find – a statue of Artume – is by the sea, and later Arthur returns her head to the sea, saying; “you were not made for human eyes.”
Rohrwacher plays with heightened reality throughout La Chimera. The opening sequence takes place on a train, which Arthur is using to return from a stint in prison. He meets a beautiful woman with a Roman nose, and this transitions into shots of a boy looking through a viewfinder at Etruscan mosaics – filled with classical figures who look just like the girl on the train. There’s also a freeze frame on the train, of everyone peering out of their carriages to stare at the camera/Arthur. The train is also the setting of a later sequence, where Arthur dreams that the dead are approaching him to retrieve their grave goods.
There are many comedic moments when Rohrwacher speeds up footage of the band on the run, evading the police – echoing silent movies such as the Keystone Cops series. A woman named Melodie who the band meet also breaks the fourth wall at one point. When kingpin Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher) finally reveals herself to the tombaroli, and they tussle over the head of Artume, they begin to growl and snarl at one another like dogs. Theatricality and hyper-reality is a Rohrwacher hallmark, and her films have a timeless quality – which make them seem like fables from long ago.
Along with the writing and cinematography, the production design and costume design are both huge contributing factors in what makes La Chimera so special. Flora’s house is a huge, crumbling pile decorated with fruits, which her daughters encircle like jackals – just waiting for their mother to die, so they can carve up the spoils. Italia deceives Flora by hiding her children in the vast building, but she and Arthur seem to be the only ones who actually genuinely care about the ailing woman.
The 1980s setting means that the costumes are fantastic, especially showing how the poor characters dress themselves up to feel special, such as a night where Italia dances in an outdoor square, or at the festival when the tombaroli cross-dress. Arthur’s extremely grubby ‘white’ linen suit has already become an iconic movie costume, and it’s especially effective because O’Connor is so much taller than the rest of the tombaroli – he stands amongst them as an almost Christlike figure.
Love and romance may not be central themes, but Arthur is clearly haunted by the disappearance, and likely death of Beniamina, which may somewhat explain why he’s drawn to the dead. He later begins to open himself up to Italia. One of the few times we see Arthur’s face light up is when he discovers Italia in an abandoned railway station building, which she has turned into a kind of commune for single mothers. It briefly seems as though he may find some kind of peace there, but he is inexorably drawn back to the underground world. Whatever he thinks he will find there will always remain impossible for him to really grasp and he finds himself entombed with the dead and their precious things.
If you haven’t yet sought out La Chimera, or even if you’ve seen it once – it is well worth discovering or rediscovering, as it unveils its secrets slowly, like an opening flower. You may be frustrated that we don’t really know Arthur by the end, but there’s something to be said for a protagonist who remains so tantalizingly obfuscated. He is the chimera – an illusion who is just out of our reach. We can project our own dreams and desires onto him, even if he is not made for our human eyes.