La Chimera is to experience film through the lens of childhood curiosity and trust Alice Rohrwacher as she breaks all the rules to fully entrench the mystique and beauty of Italian cinema from past to present.

An Englishman, Arthur, has a gift of finding the treasures beneath the Earth by uncovering the graves of those who lived before him. He is caught up in this world with a gang of fellow graverobbers as he tries to find his lost love Beniamina and identify her through these rare artifacts. Arthur tries to settle into the quaint village life, but his calling drags him down into holes as deep as the ones he digs. La Chimera takes itself to whimsy and realist heights while never sacrificing its complexity in favor of substance.

It is Alice’s style choices that fully wash the viewer into her vision by breaking the fourth wall and some unexpected inverted shots. The full-on nostalgia from the blend of sixteen and thirty-five millimeters is seamless transporting the audience into a new world they can’t decipher the period. Presenting memories in this oat-drenched filter approach adds to the separation of imagining the nostalgia of the past. There is always a sense of disorientation, not exactly knowing where you are and what is happening but it adds to the meditative atmosphere crafted on this spiritual journey. La Chimera also is a celebration of Italian cinema using techniques spanned throughout the culture’s history of film. Playful moments mixed with silence to exemplify the obsession with the unseen is an homage to Italian cinema.

While the beginning of the film is flooded with passion, Rohrwacher strips it away to match the shell-like nature of her leading man. How does one imagine the world when all curiosity is drained? Pain creeps into the magic maturing the story from when that bubble of naivety finally pops as the sober realizations of life finally hit Arthur in a truly cinematic sequence. It is a perfect mixture of spirituality and metaphors that finally blend led by Arthur’s ability in a final moment that truly get the heart rate up speaking to the emotional investment of the viewer into the story. There is this graceful fall into finding peace in another realm that has been calling Arthur the entire time.

Like Lydia Tar once said, Time is the Thing, and it certainly is in La Chimera. It is all about time in our current world and the means beyond. Knowing the period is not the point, but to get lost in this world is. When we are out of the past there is a sense of innocence lost as we can then remember happier times we wish to return to. Our relationship with time is often conflicting with desire to be in the future but never being free of our pasts. Memories can be haunting if we leave them to rest or continue to take them into the next century with us. As the lines between death and living start to become blurred the descent into Arthur’s morality and mind feels like treading through a darkened labyrinth in the search for answers to Rohrwacher’s aesthetic tricks. The craft of this film mirrors the mystique fables it examines in hunting for the soul within the film that carries on well past the film’s conclusion into reality.

The artifacts represent memories and remnants from centuries before being rediscovered in the present. It poses the question of leaving the past behind with its stories or if there is a right to bring them to the surface to craft our fables about. Arthur and his gang and the rival company he sells his treasures to possess the duality of the moral dilemma with this practice serving insight on the unethical nature of pulling these pieces to be displayed in institutions. If people don’t know how they are sourced but can use them to uncover history does it make it okay? Who is the owner of the past and who is responsible for claiming it?

La Chimera is such a religious viewing experience in its ability to hit the soul in the right places. One walks out feeling purified and stuck with questioning the morality of life. In the madness of every film feeling like an interpretation of one another. La Chimera earns the honor of being a true original in not only its story but the emotion it evokes and asks from its audience. Alice Rohrwacher’s filmmaking so full of youth and wonder becomes a state of despair in such a timely manner replicating the idea of maturity. There is not a specific time stated, but in the Italian countryside, it feels like the 80s structured like a Greek fable having an actual chorus of characters and a blend of comedy and drama. Alice invited people in without ever preaching or polarizing the point of the story. It is a world anyone can get lost in and find a source of representation. We can identify similarities between our worlds, but also explore the differences that this is not our present.

Arthur is committing wrong acts of trespassing into a world not meant for living eyes, but is his true crime, wanting to resurrect forgotten souls like his great love. He is not interested in rehashing his past for the sake of the story, so he fuels himself through this supernatural hobby. A lot of the sense of discovery falls on him and he delivers with simple facial expressions and sincerity that communicate everything that needs to be known at the moment. Even though he is caught up in the fascination of the grave robbers he never feels like he is doing it for the same thievery as them. There is something deeper for his actions and it takes further digging to find that meaning. Josh O’Connor is a broken man drifting through the motions of the thing he once loved. He is so magnetic to watch as this embodiment of the Enligsh who are known to steal artifacts and place them in museums. He works as a weird representation of the colonization of other people’s memories and legacy as his own. Going towards the dead seems to be what is keeping him alive for as long as that rush continues.

La Chimera is its uncovered artifact that is not afraid to break boundaries as its viewers search and sit within its soul.

Grade: A+

Oscar Prospects:
Likely: None
Should Be Considered: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Josh O’Connor), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing

Where to Watch: In Theaters

Jillian Chilingerian
she/her @JillianChili
Lives in LA. Loves Iced Americanos and slow burns.
Favorite Director: David Fincher
Sign: Leo