La Chimera Review: A Breathtaking Journey into Italy’s Mythic Past

In Alice Rohrwacher’s rapturous “La Chimera,” the remnants of ancient Etruscan civilization lie mere inches below the surface of modern-day Tuscany, ripe for unearthing. This beguiling film follows Arthur (Josh O’Connor), a melancholic Englishman adrift in 1980s Italy, who possesses an uncanny ability to locate lost artifacts buried deep within the earth’s enigmatic depths.

Joining a rag-tag band of local tombaroli (grave robbers), Arthur’s pursuit soon transcends mere financial gain as he seeks a metaphysical “doorway to the afterlife” that may reunite him with his lost love, Beniamina. Rohrwacher, an auteur with a singularly mystical voice, weaves a spellbinding tapestry where the boundaries between past and present, life and death, constantly blur and intermingle.

With her signature magical realist flair, deft visual artistry, and an astute grasp of Italy’s cultural paradoxes, “La Chimera” emerges as a poetic excavation of history’s reverberations in the modern world. This exquisitely crafted arthouse gem mines profound depths beneath its deceptively whimsical surface, uncovering revelations about our collective debt to the past.

Unraveling Ancient Mysteries

“La Chimera” unveils its multi-layered narrative through the wanderings of Arthur, a disheveled yet enigmatic Englishman whose tattered cream suit belies a penetrating mind. Recently sprung from prison, Arthur rejoins his motley crew of tombaroli comrades who plunder Etruscan graves for precious antiquities to sell on the black market. While his roguish accomplices are driven by profit, Arthur seems propelled by a deeper, more spiritual longing to unearth a path to the afterlife and reconnect with Beniamina, his long-lost love.

This metaphysical odyssey leads Arthur to the dilapidated Tuscan villa of Flora, Beniamina’s eccentric mother, portrayed with timeless grace by Isabella Rossellini. Flora clings to the belief that her daughter will one day return, allowing Arthur to nurture his own grief amidst the fading frescoes.

Here, he encounters Italia (Carol Duarte), a warm-hearted dreamer who tends to Flora despite being vocally challenged. As Arthur’s bond with Italia tentatively blossoms, he must confront his conflicting desires – to let Beniamina’s memory rest or discover an eerie miracle.

Meanwhile, the tombaroli’s nightly excavations escalate from unearthing modest pottery to the shock of stumbling upon an immaculately preserved Etruscan temple. This epiphanic find, symbolic of civilizations burying their riches for the afterlife, propels the motley crew from jovial raiders to adversaries driven by insatiable greed. Arthur’s unique talents thrust him into this maelstrom of artefact pilfering, blurring archeological passion and profiteering in a dizzying ethical descent.

Timeless Parables and Ethical Excavations

At its core, “La Chimera” is a profound meditation on the inextricable links between the past and present, the living and the dead. Rohrwacher deftly illustrates how the ancient world casts an indelible shadow over modern life in ways both metaphysical and corporeal. Arthur’s wistful longing to breach the veil and reunite with Beniamina mirrors how the artifacts so casually plundered by the tombaroli still resonate with spiritual significance, anchoring them to the culture that birthed them centuries ago.

This archeological pursuit, equal parts passion and criminality, poses thorny ethical quandaries. While the tombaroli regard the Etruscan relics as unmoored from their original context, ripe for profiting, Italia’s horrified reaction speaks to a deeper moral disquiet – are we dishonoring the dead by disturbing their meticulously prepared final resting places? Rohrwacher refrains from judging, instead using the competing perspectives to explore the messy debate over who truly “owns” the lingering remnants of history’s fallen civilizations.

Beneath the arthouse cerebral realm, “La Chimera” pulses with rich veins of mythology and fable. Arthur’s odyssey evokes Orphic undertones as he metaphorically journeys into the underworld seeking resurrection of his lost love. The film’s title itself refers to the chimera, that malleable, shape-shifting creature of Greek lore, hinting at the narrative’s deft ability to transmute between modes – grounded realism, dreamlike reverie, earthy comedy. Rohrwacher’s storytelling bears its own uniquely folkloric flavor, with seasoned singers regaling audiences about the tombaroli’s antics in epic balladry.

Spellbinding Sights and Cinematic Sorcery

Alice Rohrwacher wields her cinematic craft like a magician’s wand, conjuring an enchanting Tuscan world that shimmers between harsh reality and rapturous reverie. Her singular style seamlessly melds the grit of neorealist traditions with an aura of fable-spun mysticism. In “La Chimera,” this mastery of tonal balancing acts reaches sublime new heights through splendorous visuals and narrative ingenuity.

Alongside her longtime cinematographer Hélène Louvart, Rohrwacher embraces an avant-garde fusion of film stocks and aspect ratios. Creamy 35mm footage melts into grainy 16mm texture; rounded antique frames evoke the nostalgia of early cinema. These bold techniques aurally ebb and flow, reflecting the story’s fluidity between concrete and ethereal planes of existence. Louvart’s camerawork is awash in the earthy, sun-dappled splendor of the Tuscan countryside, evoking the region’s eternal and indomitable essence.

Rohrwacher’s nonlinear, free-flowing approach to storytelling is equally bewitching. Scenes unfurl with a dreamy unpredictability, segueing from rambunctious misadventures of the tombaroli into poetic meditations on love, loss, and the tantalizing lure of history’s artifacts.

The director delights in shape-shifting stylistic detours – slapstick physical comedy abuts lyrical Art House rhapsody; perspectives kaleidoscope between the story’s myriad characters. This shape-shifting mosaic ultimately coheres into a richly textured tapestry, mirroring the film’s overarching mosaic of ancient and modern.

Through sumptuous visuals and an alchemic command of tone, Rohrwacher crafts an utterly transportive cinematic experience. “La Chimera” envelops the viewer in its intoxicating splendor, awakening our senses to the enduring magic pulsing beneath Italy’s stratified soils.

Inhabiting Etruscan Echoes

At the haunted heart of “La Chimera” lies Josh O’Connor’s exquisitely layered performance as Arthur. The British actor fully inhabits this melancholic wanderer adrift in the Tuscan countryside, evoking a man permanently displaced between realms – the achingly corporeal world he trudges through, and the ethereal oblivion where his lost love Beniamina resides.

O’Connor’s turn is a masterclass in internalized angst simmering beneath an impassive exterior. His hangdog countenance and slouching gait barely conceal the profound yearning and spiritual emptiness devouring Arthur from within. Yet the actor exhibits a fragile, childlike openness in his warmly human moments, allowing glimmers of levity to perforate the somber surface. It’s a towering performance of haunted dimension.

Opposite O’Connor, the luminous Isabella Rossellini imbues the nostalgic role of Flora with trademark radiance. As Beniamina’s wizened yet perpetually hopeful mother, Rossellini plays with bewitching ambiguity – is she a cosseted eccentric ensconced in delusion, or a woman enlightened enough to hold vigil for miracles? Her naturalistic graciousness beckons with the aura of fabled Italian cinema’s golden eras.

Providing an earthy, effervescent counterpoint is Carol Duarte as the irrepressible Italia. Though nominally just the villa’s hapless maid, Duarte’s zestfully nebulous performance hints at deeper philosophical profundities. Her determination to ethically commune with the Etruscan relics feels downright revolutionary amidst the rampant plundering. Duarte’s sparkling presence anchors the film’s misfit-seeking-miracle narrative core.

The tombaroli players, while less individually spotlighted, coalesce into a vivacious, Fellini-esque ensemble brimming with rustic Italian charm. Whether caroling in raucous musical interludes or bickering over their latest underground score, this rowdy bunch breathes kaleidoscopic working-class vitality into the mythical premise. Their unselfconscious effusiveness highlights the spiritual void gnawing at the polished, privilege-addled art world eager to possess Etruria’s remains.

A Masterful Confluence of Cinematic Lineages

In the rich tapestry of “La Chimera,” one can discern the indelible influences of revered Italian auteurs like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini. Rohrwacher’s earthy, almost primordial sense of folkloric mysticism reverberates with Pasolini’s poetic humanism. Meanwhile, her anarchic embrace of the carnivalesque – exemplified by the tombaroli’s raucous song-and-dance asides – channels Fellini’s perpetual celebration of life’s circuses.

Yet Rohrwacher synthesizes these ancestral artistic voices into a singular magical realist idiom utterly her own. “La Chimera” is unmistakably cut from the same metaphysical cloth as her thematically-linked “rural trilogy” films – “Corpo Celeste,” “The Wonders,” and the rapturously fable-spun “Happy as Lazzaro.” In each, the writer-director excavates the evanescent beauty and parables lurking within Italy’s fading peasant communities.

For Rohrwacher, the subsistence traditions and histories enshrined in these increasingly obsolete pockets hold the keys to transcendent human truths. By imbuing her marginalized characters with shamanistic significance, she posits them as ambassadors from realms more spiritually attuned than our own.

This daring artistic alchemy has solidified Rohrwacher’s status as a profoundly vital voice on the international arthouse circuit. “La Chimera” reigned as a critics’ darling after its Cannes premiere, with many hailing it as her masterwork. The film’s deliriously inventive exploration of past’s intrusion upon present, coupled with Rohrwacher’s intoxicating command of the medium’s formal possibilities, posits her alongside countrymen like Paolo Sorrentino as Italy’s most essential auteurs.

Unearthing Eternal Truths

“La Chimera” is a crowning achievement for Alice Rohrwacher, a director who wields the power to transpose viewers into realms where the corporeal and metaphysical intertwine. Her spellbinding latest opus encapsulates all her supreme talents – the visionary world-building, tonal dexterity, and peerless command of her craft’s formal possibilities.

By threading the mystical needles of archeology and necromancy, Rohrwacher has exhumed a filmed fable as poignant as it is audacious. Her free-flowing narrative excavates eternal human truths about our interconnection with the lingering ghosts of history. “La Chimera’s” shimmering, dreamlike textures and avant-garde aesthetic risks intoxicate the senses, while the earthy charisma of its eclectic ensemble roots the metaphysical flights in vital, pulsating life forces.

Rohrwacher’s greatest revelation, however, may be in positing herself as a cinematic medium – one who can channel the immortal artistic ancestries of Italian cinema while advancing their aesthetics and ideas into transformative new realms. With “La Chimera,” this prodigiously gifted auteur has crafted nothing less than a spellbinding modern masterwork deserving of pantheon status.